Frequency-based word removal cleans text by counting word occurrences and applying a frequency threshold. It can remove extremely common words, such as “the” or “is,” or very rare words appearing only once or twice. section 7.6
Apply the technique with these checks:
- Count word frequencies across the text or dataset. section 7.6
- Set a threshold based on the task: remove common terms, rare terms, or both. section 7.6
- Inspect business and contextual requirements before deleting words; frequent terms can still carry essential meaning. section 7.6
Context can override frequency
Words such as “is,” “it,” and “the” may be removed as common terms, but removing them from the question “is it raining?” can destroy the meaning of the answer “it is.” section 7.6
