(B) Collecting and pre-processing data
In the Bag of Words algorithm, the first step is Text Processing, which involves collecting data and pre-processing it (text normalisation).
The source passage explicitly lists the steps of Bag of Words: Step 1 is "Collecting data and pre-processing it," Step 2 is creating a dictionary, and Step 3–4 involve creating document vectors. Examiners expect you to directly identify option (B) as the answer. Do not confuse "Text Normalisation" (the broader NLP concept) with the first step of the BoW algorithm, which is data collection and pre-processing.