Data Normalization
Cleaning and standardizing values so the same kind of data always looks the same way across a dataset.
Data normalization standardizes how values are represented so they're consistent across every row: dates in one format, phone numbers stripped of inconsistent punctuation, category labels matched to a fixed list instead of free text. Without normalization, two records describing the same thing can look unrelated to software (and to an AI system) even though a human would recognize them as the same.
Example
Turning "6/20/26", "2026-06-20", and "June 20, 2026" into a single consistent `2026-06-20` date format across an entire dataset is normalization.