“Data cooking”: The Process For Making Artichoke Dips Gitika Gorthi, Chantilly High School Food and data are quite similar. How come? Let me explain. Both are consumed for the purpose of nourishment. In case of food, it is our body and in case of data, it is the model that we are trying to build. Whether it be by using a blender or our teeth, we process all of our food before consumption to avoid choking. To be more specific, imagine eating an artichoke. Will you just consume it at once or will you process it with your teeth before consumption? Most of us will do the latter to avoid choking by the extremely nutritious vegetable. The same conceptual idea is applied on data. Data is powerful and imperative for technological advancements; however, if raw data is fed into machine learning (ML), Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), or other similar systems without the cooking or cleaning parts, it may lead to dangerous outcomes instead. Figure 1: Labeled illustration of the good and choke parts