Data Mining

Data Mining

Data Mining Definition

         Data mining is defined as the process of extracting information from large data sets in addition to the transformation of these information into a structure which can be used furtherly. Data Mining contains two fields which are computer science and statistics. We can say that data mining is used for extracting knowledge from large data set and not for extracting the data itself, this will be done by using specific techniques such as spatial indices. The increase in data collection and analysis was caused by the increasing computer technology power which enable data mining to apply new methods such as neural networks for extracting specific knowledge from a large database.

Data Mining Tasks

       i.          Anomaly Detection: It's the first step which is performed to identify both unusual data which can be interesting and data errors which need to be investigated.

     ii.          Association rule learning: as the variables in the market always have relationships, this step is performed to search for these relationships.

   iii.          Clustering: In this task, the similar structures in the data will be discovered.

   iv.          Classification: In this task, known data will be generalized for the application to new data, let we take the spam folder on G-mail as an example.

     v.          Regression: the purpose of this task is the estimation of relationship among data by finding a function for modeling the data with the least possible errors.

   vi.          Summarization: this task generates a report to represent the data set.

Data Mining Applications

         Data mining has a wide range of applications as all industries need it today for increasing their efficiency and effectiveness in the global market. There are some applications of data mining in various industries:

ü Sales & Marketing_ Data mining is so important for the market analysis as it is helps companied in gaining more profits by providing them information about the most sold products and in what combination they are sold. It's also used for identifying the behavior of customers during buying process.

ü Banking & Finance_ Data mining is used for the detection of credit card. It's also used for knowing the score of customers by analyzing the data of their activities for identifying their loyalty. In banks, data mining is used for identifying rules, identifying credit card spending and discovering correlations between financial indicators.

ü Health Care & Insurance_ Data mining is used widely in this sector for the identification of the claimed medical procedures. It's also used for helping insurance companies in the behavior patterns' detection of specific customers.

ü Energy_ Data mining is used for providing suitable solutions of technical problems by identifying the important information.

ü Crime Agency_ By providing the hidden data, data mining is used for the prevention of the crime in almost all crime agencies.

ü Education_ Data mining techniques are used widely in the educational sector for the improvement of learning process, enhancing the educational environment, making decisions, the prediction of students' results and developing new teaching techniques for the students.