SECAI Core · phase 3 of 15 · noun

Data augmentation

A process of generating additional, artificial data that is similar to existing data, primarily for the purpose of training machine learning models and also often for use in computer vision processes.

The Explain card

Plain English
Data augmentation creates extra artificial examples that resemble the existing data, giving a model more variety to learn from. It is especially common in computer vision.
Example
A team training a document-tampering detector rotates, blurs and re-lights its image samples so the model copes with photos taken on bad phone cameras.
Why it matters
Augmentation improves robustness, including against some adversarial inputs, but it can also amplify a poisoned sample into many variants, spreading a backdoor through the whole dataset.
Hook
One photo becomes a hundred cousins, for good or bad.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

On the passport-scan pipeline, data augmentation applies random rotation, crop, and JPEG compression to each page before the forgery detector trains.

Why these words
  • data Latin data, things given, plural of datum marks the material under increase, the records rather than the model
  • augmentation Latin augmentatio, an increase, from augere, to make grow supplies the head noun, the growth applied to those records
Where it came from
Origin
English computing collocation from Latin data (things given, plural of datum) and Latin augmentatio (an increase, from augere, to make grow)
Entered the language
1987
What changed
Data had meant things given, then facts granted in an argument, then the records a machine keeps. Augmentation had meant an increase since the late 1300s and later a stipend extra, a legal enlargement, and a military reinforcement. Tanner and Wong joined the two words in 1987 for a statistical method that fills in missing values, and machine learning later borrowed the collocation for the training-set step that multiplies examples already on hand.
How it is spelled
Pattern
data keeps the Latin plural of datum even when English treats it as a mass noun
Pattern
au in augment spells the vowel as in author and autumn
Pattern
-ation after t spells /ʃən/
Breaks the pattern
the noun phrase stays two words; a hyphen appears only when the phrase modifies another noun
Breaks the pattern
data looks plural but computing English often treats it as a mass noun
Breaks the pattern
the everyday verb is augment, not augmentate, so the -ate of augmentation has no living partner in common English

Spelled like

  • database
  • author
  • autumn
  • information
Broken into chunks
  • data
    • datum
    • metadata
    • database
  • aug
    • augment
    • august
    • auction
  • ment
    • document
    • increment
    • monument
  • ation
    • declaration
    • information
    • authentication
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

Data compounds

Augmentation compounds

  • image augmentation
  • audio augmentation
  • test-time augmentation

The augere family

  • augment
  • august
  • auction

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 3: Data Fundamentals: Types, Pipelines, and Preparation

Models are only as good as their data — understand the raw material and the engineering that shapes it before covering how it flows or breaks.

Neighbours in this phase