Normalizing data

Some datasets are nice to view but complicated for further processing. Take a look at the following extract of one of the matches files we were working with:

Date;Venue;Country;Matches;Country
07/09/12 15:00;Havana;Cuba;0:3;Honduras;
07/09/12 19:00;Kingston;Jamaica;2:1;USA;
07/09/12 19:30;San Salvador;El Salvador;2:2;Guyana;
07/09/12 19:45;Toronto;Canada;1:0;Panama;
07/09/12 20:00;Guatemala City;Guatemala;3:1;Antigua and Barbuda;
07/09/12 20:05;San Jose;Costa Rica;0:2;Mexico;
...

Imagine you want to answer the following questions:

• How many teams played?

• Which team converted most goals?

• Which team won all matches it played?

The dataset is not prepared to answer these questions, at least in an easy way. If you want to answer those questions in a simple way, first you will have to normalize the data, that is, convert it to a suitable format before proceeding. Let's work on it.