Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T14:26:39.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Introduction to Data Mining

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2019

Parteek Bhatia
Affiliation:
Thapar University, India
Get access

Summary

Chapter Objectives

✓ To learn about the concepts of data mining.

✓ To understand the need for, and the applications of data mining

✓ To differentiate between data mining and machine learning

✓ To understand the process of data mining.

✓ To understand the difference between data mining and machine learning.

Introduction to Data Mining

In the age of information, an enormous amount of data is available in different industries and organizations. The availability of this massive data is of no use unless it is transformed into valuable information. Otherwise, we are sinking in data, but starving for knowledge. The solution to this problem is data mining which is the extraction of useful information from the huge amount of data that is available.

Data mining is defined as follows:

‘Data mining is a collection of techniques for efficient automated discovery of previously unknown, valid, novel, useful and understandable patterns in large databases. The patterns must be actionable so they may be used in an enterprise's decision making.’

From this definition, the important take aways are:

  • • Data mining is a process of automated discovery of previously unknown patterns in large volumes of data.

  • • This large volume of data is usually the historical data of an organization known as the data warehouse.

  • • Data mining deals with large volumes of data, in Gigabytes or Terabytes of data and sometimes as much as Zetabytes of data (in case of big data).

  • • Patterns must be valid, novel, useful and understandable.

  • • Data mining allows businesses to determine historical patterns to predict future behaviour.

  • • Although data mining is possible with smaller amounts of data, the bigger the data the better the accuracy in prediction.

  • • There is considerable hype about data mining at present, and the Gartner Group has listed data mining as one of the top ten technologies to watch.

  • Need of Data Mining

    Data mining is a recent buzz word in the field of Computer Science. It is a computing process that uses intelligent mathematical algorithms to extract the relevant data and computes the probability of future actions. It is also known as Knowledge Discovery in Data (KDD).

    Type
    Chapter
    Information
    Data Mining and Data Warehousing
    Principles and Practical Techniques
    , pp. 17 - 27
    Publisher: Cambridge University Press
    Print publication year: 2019

    Access options

    Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

    Save book to Kindle

    To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

    Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

    Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

    Available formats
    ×

    Save book to Dropbox

    To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

    Available formats
    ×

    Save book to Google Drive

    To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

    Available formats
    ×