Data preprocessing is a technique used to prepare raw data for data mining by cleaning data, handling missing values, smoothing noisy data, and reducing data size. It involves techniques such as data cleaning, integration, transformation, and reduction. Data cleaning identifies and removes errors and inconsistencies. Data integration merges data from multiple sources. Data transformation operations like normalization prepare data for certain algorithms. Data reduction reduces data size through aggregation, attribute selection, and other techniques. Preprocessing resolves issues in raw data to improve data mining results.