Data Mining

INTRO DATA MINING

Data mining is the process of analyzing enormous amounts of information to help organisation

Predict future trends . Data mining is like an actual mining because the miners are sitting through a
mountain of material to find valuable resource

Data mining also includes establishing relationships and finding patterns, anomalies, and correlation to
tackle issues, creating actionable information in the process
Stage 1- Business understanding

Business understanding is made up of three core elements

● Setting the objectives
● Developing the project plan
● Establishing the criteria for success.
Business understanding sets the foundation for the entire data mining process;
guiding data collection, analysis, and interpretation to ensure that the insights
derived align with the business’s needs and objectives.
Business understanding continued

Once the business needs have been established, other important factors, such
as the available resources, the constraints on the process and a data-mining
plan and goals must be considered
The plan will involve the development of queries to interrogate the data.
Stage 2- Data understanding

Data understanding is a crucial phase in the data mining process where you
explore and become familiar with the data that will be used for analysis.

It involves gathering, describing and assessing data that is collected from

various sources that are available.

Once the data is collected, the integrity, accuracy and the properties of the data
are considered, to make sure that it is viable.
Data Understanding continued

Once the data is established as viable, it can be interrogated using queries that
were developed in the business understanding stage.

This interrogation will help the business understand whether the data is
complete and will provide them with the desired outcome.
Stage 3- Data preparation.

Data preparation involves cleaning, transforming and organizing the raw

data to make it suitable for analysis and modeling to make sure that it is
in the form required for the business.

This is the largest stage in the project and the most time consuming.

During this stage the data is taken through a whole process of selection,
cleansing, construction This can then allow for patterns and trends to be
established in the data, relating to the business needs.
Stage 4- Data modeling

Data modeling is a process where you create mathematical and statistical

representations of the data in order to discover patterns, relationships and
insights.

In this process you use algorithms and techniques to build models that capture
the underlying structure of the data and help you make predictions or decisions
based on the data.

This will allow the business to understand whether the models are suitable for
the business needs, and that the models fall in line with the business initiatives.
Stage 5- Evaluation

Evaluation is assessing the performance and effectiveness of the models and

results obtained from data modelling . This is to ensure that the models are
accurate reliable and capable of generalizing new unseen data.

The outcome of this evaluation may produce new business needs, depending
on the patterns and trends that have been identified in the process.
Stage 6- Deployment

Deployment refers to the phase where the insights, models and patterns
discovered during the data mining process are put into practical use in a
real-world context

The deployment stage normally involves creating a report and other visual
material to present the findings of the data mining process to the
stakeholders of a business.
Deployment continued.

This information can then be used by the stakeholders to decide what

actions the business will take next.

The deployment phase is crucial for extracting value from the insights
gained through data mining and applying them to solve business or
analytical problems
National Security and surveillance

One type of surveillance that data mining is used for is corporate surveillance.

Corporate surveillance describes the practice of businesses monitoring and extracting information from their
users, clients or staff. This information may consist of online browsing history, email correspondence, phone
calls, location data, and other private details.

Facebook uses at least 52,000 personal attributes to sort and categorize its 1.9 billion users by, for example,
their political views, ethnicity, and income. In order to do so, the platform analyzes their posts, likes, shares,
friends, photos, movements, and many other kinds of behaviors.

In addition, Facebook acquires data on its users from other companies. In 2013, the platform began its
partnership with the four data brokers Acxiom, Epsilon, Datalogix and BlueKai, the latter two of which were
subsequently acquired by the IT giant Oracle. These companies help Facebook track and profile its users even
better than it already does by providing it with data collected from beyond its platform.
National security and surveillance

Data mining can be used for fraud detection since fraud is a threat to national security.
Fraud detection is identifying fraudulent transactions from within a larger dataset.

Data mining finds patterns in data. Data mining analyses enormous volumes of data to
find helpful information or anticipate future occurrences.
Data mining can identify fraud in several ways. It can locate false patterns, for example.
Certain times of day or weeks, or places with a history of fraud, may see more fraudulent
transactions. These strategies are successful if they fit established fraud trends.
Business

Sales applications
● At the POS of supermarkets and/or restaurants data can be collected on
the type of product that is sold and the time it was sold.
● Using this a company can select the best products to sell and at what time
to sell them at.
● Thus best utilising their cash ,because only products that are regularly
sold are in high stock.
Marketing
● The aforementioned points can also carry over to marketing .
● As popular products can be selected to advertise and promote.
● In addition, data mining can also show busy areas in a city,thus showing
the best place to display adverts.
Manufacturing
● Can be used to optimise the manufacturing process.
● Highlights the cost of raw materials.
● The efficacy of certain material sources
● Potential bottlenecks in the manufacturing process.
Research

● Research is often a time consuming process ;it can take a lot of time to
sift through other people works.
● Data mining allows you to look for specific information and key word
whilst researching.
● It also increases the speed at which data is collected;removes the need for
manual collection of data..
● Thus making it easy for predicting certain trends.
Health care

● Data mining is used to identify success in certain health practices and

help cost prediction.
● It also aids in predicting the volume of patients
● In addition data mining can also be used to track teh spread of a disease.
● Like In sout Korea during the covid-19 pandemic,credit card transactions
and other data was logged on a government database.
Predicting social economic trends

Data mining has a large role in predicting future social and economic trends.
Many institutions are concerned with the stabilisation and growth of the global
economic market.
Any data and intelligence that can predict what might happen in future with the
economy can help important institutions, such as governments, to prepare for any
possible crisis that may occur.
Companies can also use the ability to predict what may lay ahead with the
economy to make important business decisions, such as where they should plan
to expand their business.
Ethical and privacy implications

● Data mined on individuals is often used to target them with certain

products and advertisement.
● This is not necessarily the worst case if its a product you ar genuinely
interested in.
● It can becoming quite irritating.
● In addition,it could upset the user,as possible personal illnesses could be
disclosed and idndividuals may not be comfortable with that.
● This search data is often shared with other companies.
Advantages

● Allows organizations to make strategic decisions that can help maintain or

increase their revenue.
● Allows organizations to understand their customers and create the products they need.
● Allows individuals to see targeted product advertising based on the things they already
like.
● Allows important institutions to predict future crisis that they can then plan strategies
and solutions to help handle or avoid them.
● Allows business to save costs either by understanding how to streamline what they
already do or by not investing in a future product that they can now be aware of.
Disadvantages

● Software tools and skilled staff is required.

● Many people see the practice of data as both unethical and an invasion of their privacy.
● Storage cost for the data are very expensive, therefore, this can also increase the cost of the
process of data mining.
● A great security issue, as hackers will want to gain access to the data because it has a high value.
● The outcomes produced by data mining are only predictions based on patterns and trends in past
data. They are not an accurate science and it is very possible for them to be incorrect.