row
What It Means
In data and AI systems, a row represents one complete record or instance of whatever you're analyzing - like one customer, one transaction, or one product. Each row contains all the different pieces of information (columns) about that single item. The more rows you have, the more examples your AI system can learn from.
Why Chief AI Officers Care
The number and quality of rows directly determines how well your AI models will perform - more diverse, high-quality rows typically mean better predictions and insights. Having insufficient rows or biased row samples can lead to AI systems that fail in real-world scenarios, creating compliance risks and poor business outcomes. Row-level data governance also affects privacy regulations since each row often represents an individual person or sensitive business entity.
Real-World Example
In a customer churn prediction model, each row represents one customer with their complete profile - demographics, purchase history, support tickets, and whether they eventually churned. If you have 100,000 customer rows spanning different segments and time periods, your AI can learn diverse patterns, but if you only have 1,000 rows from premium customers, it won't predict churn well for budget customers.
Common Confusion
People often confuse rows with data points or metrics, but a row is the complete record while individual data points are the values within columns of that row. Another common mistake is thinking more rows always equals better AI - quality and representativeness of rows matters more than pure quantity.
Industry-Specific Applications
See how this term applies to healthcare, finance, manufacturing, government, tech, and insurance.
Healthcare: In healthcare data systems, each row typically represents one patient encounter, procedure, or clinical event, containin...
Finance: In finance, each row typically represents a single financial transaction, customer account, or trading position across y...
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Includes:
- 6 industry-specific applications
- Relevant regulations by sector
- Real compliance scenarios
- Implementation guidance
Technical Definitions
NISTNational Institute of Standards and Technology
"describes a single entity or observation and the columns describe properties about that entity or observation. The more rows you have, the more examples from the problem domain that you have."Source: Machine_Learning_Mastery_Jason_Brownlee
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