Data · Beginner
Diagnose a messy dataset
You export sales data.
You are a data analyst. Diagnose the problems in this dataset. Do NOT clean it and do not return cleaned rows. What this data is: [describe - e.g. monthly sales export from Tally] What I want to do with it: [the analysis you intend] Total rows in the real file: [number] Here is a representative sample: [paste 30-50 rows including the header, and deliberately include any rows you know are odd] Give me: 1. COLUMN AUDIT - for each column: what it should be (text, number, date, category), what it actually appears to be, and the specific problem. 2. PROBLEMS FOUND - each with roughly how many rows in the sample are affected, so I know what matters. 3. AMBIGUOUS CASES - anything you genuinely cannot resolve without asking me. Date format ambiguity and possible-duplicate entities both belong here. Do not guess. 4. WHAT WOULD BREAK - given the analysis I said I want to do, which of these problems would produce a WRONG answer rather than an error message. Those are the dangerous ones. Do not propose fixes yet. Diagnosis only.
Section 4 is the one that matters. Problems that cause errors get noticed; problems that cause wrong answers do not.
Before you rely on the answer
- Answer the Sharma Traders, Nashik question yourself before any merge. This is a business fact the model cannot know, and getting it wrong corrupts the top-20 list either way.
- Check the row count before and after every fix. A cleaning step that drops rows is the most common silent failure.
- After the customer-name fix, count distinct customers before and after. If it fell from 340 to 180, something over-merged.
- Ask specifically for the list of ambiguous dates in the full file, and resolve them against the source system rather than assuming.