Ladon Robinson continues the Spark Starter Guide:
Standardization is the practice of analyzing columns of data and identifying synonyms or like names for the same item. Similar to how a cat can also be identified as a kitty, kitty cat, kitten or feline, we might want to standardize all of those entries into simply “cat” so our data is less messy and more organized. This can make future processing of the data more streamlined and less complicated. It can also reduce skew, which we address in Addressing Data Cardinality and Skew.
We will learn how to standardize data in the following exercises.
Check it out. I’m excited to see the Spark Starter Guide get fleshed out and written.