concept

dataset

A collection of data points used for training or testing models.
33 related articles

Description

A dataset is a structured collection of data points, each representing a single observation or example, used to train or test machine learning models. In physics and materials science, datasets are the raw material from which models learn patterns—for instance, mapping molecular structures to their properties or predicting the outcomes of particle collisions. The quality, size, and diversity of a dataset directly determine what a model can learn and how well it generalizes to new, unseen cases.

History

The concept of a dataset as a formal object emerged with the rise of statistics and machine learning in the mid-20th century. In physics, the practice of sharing large experimental datasets became common with big collaborations like the Human Genome Project (1990s) and later with open data releases from CERN and astronomical surveys.

How it works

Datasets are typically organized as tables or arrays, where each row is a sample and each column is a feature (input) or a label (output). For training, a model is shown many examples and adjusts its internal parameters to minimize the difference between its predictions and the true labels. A separate test set, not seen during training, is used to evaluate performance. In physics, datasets often come from simulations, experiments, or curated literature, and may include uncertainties or physical constraints.

In practice

Datasets power machine learning models used to predict material properties, accelerate simulations, classify astronomical objects, and analyze particle collision data, as highlighted in the provided article titles.

Fun fact

The quality of a dataset often matters more than its size: a small, carefully curated dataset with accurate labels can outperform a large, noisy one, as emphasized in the article 'Твердотельные батареи: ключ к успеху — не объём данных, а их качество'.

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Related articles · 33

q-bio.QM2026-09-112 minarXiv:2609.90039
SenSASP: a map of aging genes stitched together from four old ones
Four old maps were lying in different desk drawers. Each one marked genes linked to cellular aging, but the maps did not match: different names, different scales, different legends. A scientist hunting for a gene to test had to cross-check them by hand, at the risk of missing an important mark. SenSASP stitched those maps into one.
Chemical Physics2026-08-211 minarXiv:2608.21322express
Counting Protein Jitters in Seconds
A protein in a cell doesn't hang motionless like a mannequin in a store window. Its atoms are constantly jiggling, stretching, and bending, like a plucked guitar string that keeps vibrating after you strum it. To understand how a protein works, you need to know how tightly each part holds onto its neighbors.
Statistical ML2026-08-171 minarXiv:2608.16506express
How to See Shape When Data Are Unevenly Sampled
Two photographers shoot the same mountain. One takes a hundred shots from the summit and only a couple from the base; the other does the opposite. If you try to align their images, the algorithm might decide that the summit in one photo matches the summit in the other simply because there are many similar points there, not because it's the same spot. Sampling density throws it off.
Why Perovskite Solar Cells Age
A perovskite solar cell is like a young athlete: it performs brilliantly at first, but tires with age. Over eight hours, its performance drops noticeably, with no visible cause like cracks or dust. Scientists took one cell and recorded its performance at 0, 90, 280, and 480 minutes of its life.
q-bio.BM2026-07-202 minarXiv:2607.17753express
Scout proteins find genes by their energy trail
A protein slides along the DNA strand like a key along a keyring, searching for its lock. One wrong turn and a gene stays switched off. To know where a protein will grip firmly, you need to measure the strength of that grip — the binding energy.
Machine Learning2026-07-151 minarXiv:2607.13891express
Radar Without Learning: How PiVoT Turns Noise into Order
A regular radar is like a microphone in a buzzing crowd: individual sounds blend into mush. PiVoT works like a conductor who instantly recognizes each instrument in the tuning chaos. Instead of shuffling through hypotheses, the algorithm tightens a loop around the most likely targets — cars, cyclists, pedestrians.
eess.AS2026-07-131 minarXiv:2607.11260express
Sound Concentrate: Transmitting Speech Without Redundant Bits
The standard way of digitizing speech: taking volume readings thousands of times per second. It's like tasting broth with a teaspoon: each sip is watery, with almost no detail. The data stream swells, though the substance is minuscule. Scientists proposed first "simmering down" the audio signal.
eess.SY2026-07-131 minarXiv:2607.11459express
The Power Industry Opens Data for AI
A living power system is like an organism: power lines are vessels, current is blood. Data, however, are nerve impulses that used to be lost. mAIEnergy connects these 'nerves' to a shared 'brain'. This data repository combines satellite images, electricity meter readings, articles, and weather reports.
eess.SY2026-07-131 minarXiv:2607.11551express
The Future File: Predicting Motion Without a Single Formula
An experienced detective doesn't calculate a criminal's path using the laws of physics: he checks a file of similar cases. The new prediction method works the same way: instead of complex equations, it has a vast archive of trajectories that have already happened — planetary motions, currency exchange rates, signals from space.
Materials2026-07-022 minarXiv:2607.01713
Symphony of Crystals: A Three-Round Audition for Future Materials
Imagine an audition for a symphony orchestra, where out of hundreds of hopefuls, only those whose instruments sound pure and withstand the furious crescendo remain. In the world of materials, computers have learned to generate 'atomic scores'—thousands of virtual crystals that promise to become the foundation for quantum chips or superconductors.
Symphony of Scales: A Neural Network That Overheard Nature's Orchestra
Imagine a philharmonic orchestra playing, but the microphone picks up only a blended roar — a tutti where double basses, flutes, and timpani all merge. Physicists have grappled with a similar task for decades, staring at fields of density, temperature, or magnetic induction.
Optics2026-06-201 minarXiv:2606.21945express
Neural Networks That Have Internalized the Laws of Nature
Ordinary neural networks learn from examples, like a person memorizing tunes by ear. But networks with physical laws embedded from the start resemble a musician who knows notes and harmony: they can play a new piece from just a few chords. Instead of mindless memorization, they use equations like energy conservation or motion.
86,000 Hours of Brain Signals: Now Just One Click Away
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HEP Experiment2026-06-082 minarXiv:2606.09714express
Neutrinos from around the world pieced into one picture
Neutrinos are often compared to a radio broadcast picked up by different receivers. One station sends a signal, but antennas in Japan, Antarctica, and at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea hear it differently — due to distance, interference, and antenna orientation.
General Relativity2026-05-262 minarXiv:2605.27514express
How to Tell a Quantum Crystal from a Foam
Spacetime is often pictured as a smooth fabric. But at the very microscopic level, this fabric might not be continuous; instead, it could consist of individual 'atoms'—events linked by causality. This picture of the world is called causal set theory.
q-bio.OT2026-05-022 minarXiv:2605.02952express
How Genes and Environment Shape Teen Behavior
An orchestra plays without a conductor. Each musician has a score: that's the genes. But the volume and tempo depend on the acoustics of the hall, the mood, and the neighbors on stage. That's roughly how heredity and daily life together shape a teenager's behavior.
Chemical Physics2026-04-272 minarXiv:2604.24607express
How a Neural Network Learns from Quantum Chemistry's Mistakes
Quantum calculations are a recipe with perfect ingredients, but nature-the-chef cooks in her own way. Machine-learned models of atoms memorize the recipe and predict material properties in seconds instead of weeks.
Materials2026-04-241 minarXiv:2604.22938express
How to Mine Data from Thousands of Papers
A library of 27,000 books, and every one of them is about concrete. Each contains a mix recipe, temperature, and strength. But the information is scattered across paragraphs, tables, and footnotes. For a human, gathering it all together would take years. The program did it in an hour.
Instrumentation2026-04-101 minarXiv:2604.09787express
One Galaxy, Two Telescopes: How to Separate Physics from Distortions
If you photograph the same mountain with a film camera and a modern smartphone, you get different images: colors are brighter in one, details are blurrier in the other. The same goes for telescopes: each instrument sees the sky in its own way, adding its own distortions to the true light of galaxies, like a filter through which we look.
Machine Learning2026-04-052 minarXiv:2604.04107express
Neural Network Learns to Feel the Earth
Seismologists listen to the Earth the way a doctor listens to a heart. Surface waves from earthquakes travel across the planet, and their speed reveals what lies beneath our feet — solid rock, melt, or water. Usually, this requires building complex physical models.
Machine Learning2026-03-151 minarXiv:2603.14161express
Learning from Many Brains
A typical machine learning model looks at one object at a time: one brain, one patient, one engine. But biologists need the big picture: how the brain of a species works as a whole, not just that of a particular fish.
Materials2026-03-142 minarXiv:2603.14139express
Hydrogen Under Control: A Database for New Materials
Hydrogen is a champion in energy per kilogram, but storing it is a hassle. As a gas, it takes up a huge volume, and if you compress it or cool it to a liquid, you need heavy tanks and lots of energy. There's a third way: some solid materials absorb hydrogen like a sponge soaks up water and hold it within. Heat it up, hydrogen comes out; cool it down, it gets absorbed back.
Materials2026-03-081 minarXiv:2603.07425express
Solid-State Batteries: The Secret Isn't in Data Volume
In a regular battery, the electrolyte is liquid, and charged particles (ions) move freely. In the solid-state version, they squeeze through atomic 'corridors', like pedestrians in narrow passages. For a battery to work quickly, you need a material with high ionic conductivity.
HEP Experiment2026-03-021 minarXiv:2603.02369express
The Detector That Never Tires
A particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider runs for years without stopping. Its sensors produce mountains of data every second, and among it all, you need to spot a fault quickly, like overheating or a broken channel. In the past, simple rules did this, but they often made mistakes.
Machine Learning2026-02-212 minarXiv:2602.18679express
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Disordered Systems2026-02-201 minarXiv:2602.18335express
Chaos in a Crystal Learns to Think
A crystal that inside resembles a sponge with a labyrinth of pores turns out to be capable of performing computations. The material, named DUT-8, consists of metal nodes and organic linkers forming an intricate lattice. Under the influence of different gases, this lattice slightly changes shape, like a house of cards that rearranges with a gentle breath.
stat.ME2026-01-302 minarXiv:2601.22481
Breaking Points: How a Restorer Cleans Data
Old weather records hold surprises: the thermometer suddenly jumps by half a degree, not because of the weather, but because the station switched instruments. Such abrupt shifts in data are called changepoints, and separating them from genuine climate signals is a challenge statisticians grapple with.
Materials2026-01-241 minarXiv:2601.17253express
Neural Network Distinguishes Real Crystals from Fantasies
Porous zeolite minerals work like tiny sponges with holes of a strictly defined size. Through such holes, molecules of one kind pass while others get stuck: this is the basis for water purification, gas separation, and catalysis in petrochemistry.
HEP Experiment2026-01-231 minarXiv:2601.17126express
EveNet: How a Neural Network Learns from 500 Million Collisions
In a collider detector, each proton collision leaves a trail of dozens of particles, like the splash from a stone thrown into water. Making sense of that splash and understanding what exactly happened at the moment of impact is a task that humans can no longer handle alone.
Medical Physics2026-01-141 minarXiv:2601.09235express
Digital Twins Teach the CT Scanner
Computed tomography is like an X-ray that takes hundreds of images from different angles and stitches them into a 3D picture of the body. But each image delivers a small dose of radiation, and doctors need to know how much each organ receives. Currently, this is often estimated roughly using average tables rather than for the specific patient.
Materials2025-03-053 minarXiv:2503.03837
A Swiss Army Knife for Graph Neural Networks in Materials Science
A Swiss Army knife is simple: one handle, many blades, each for its own task. Grab what you need and get to work. In materials science, graph neural networks have long resembled a scattered set of tools: MEGNet sat in the TensorFlow drawer, M3GNet in the PyTorch drawer, and CHGNet in a separate box with its own scripts.
stat.ME2022-05-192 minarXiv:2205.09252
Breaking Point in the Flow of Functions
A seismograph records underground tremors: the smooth line suddenly jerks and changes its character. Similarly, functional data, such as ocean temperature maps or brain signals, may shift their shape at some point. The new algorithm FSBS catches such breakpoints, even when each curve is measured at only one point and noise drowns the signal.