Data Mining

Question 1

Data mining

Answer 1

Exploration and analysis of large amounts of data to discover meaningful patterns or rules

Goes beyond summary style analysis -> looks at past data to create a model for the future

Question 2

Data mining is used where?

Answer 2

In commerce, medicine, industrial process control, law enforcement

Question 3

Pattern categories

Answer 3

Descriptive: characterise properties of the data

Predictive: perform inference on current data to make predictions

Question 4

Data mining is used for?

Answer 4

Classification
Estimation
Prediction
Affinity grouping/Association
Clustering
Profiling

Question 5

Market basket analysis

Answer 5

Analysis of what’s in a customers basket

Question 6

Why do market basket analysis

Answer 6

Insight in to who customers are
Insight into why customers make certain purchases
Analysis on what products are bought together -> new store layout, promotions etc.

Question 7

Data mining architecture

Answer 7

Data sources: where data comes from
Data servers: for fetching and storing the data
Knowledge base: has knowledge used to guide search and evaluate usefulness of patterns found
Model base: place for storing interesting models found so that they can be used against the data at a later stage

Question 8

More data mining architecture

Answer 8

Data mining engine: programs that do different types of data mining functionality

Pattern evaluation module: works with DM engine to focus search towards interesting patterns

User interface: facilitates communication between user and data mining system