Mining Gold from Data Data Mining

Data Mining Mining data is all about finding hidden patterns and relationships in data You strike “gold” when you find patterns in data that give you new information or help you make decisions

Can you find the hidden word here ?

How about here?

Or here?

This one’s tough . . .

The human mind is a master at finding patterns . . . The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, is taht it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?

But sometimes the human mind is wrong . . .

Or the human mind suffers from information overload . . . FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS . . .

Or the human mind suffers from information overload . . . FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS . . .

Or sometimes humans don’t ask the right questions . . .

Or sometimes we’re sorry we asked ANY questions . . .

Enter Data Mining Algorithms and Software Data Mining Software . . . Can detect patterns in data that the human mind cannot (e.g., finding patterns in Internet blogs to stop terrorists) Can detect patterns faster than the human mind (e.g., monitoring credit card activity for fraud) Can detect patterns when there are too many data to analyze (e.g., finding patterns in medical data to treat disease) Can detect patterns and answer questions a human being would never think to ask (e.g., beer & diapers!)

Some Data Mining Examples Amazon.com mines customer purchasing data to suggest additional purchases to online shoppers (Cobbs, 2006) Stanford University School of Medicine used data mining to pinpoint genes involved in diseases, aging, injuries, & muscle development (Biotech Week, 2006) The NSA mines telephone data in search of patterns to identify & link suspected terrorists (Sternstein, 2006) Bank of America uses data mining to detect & deter credit card fraud (Hormazi, 2004) Fingerhut uses data mining to send over 130 “specialty” catalogs to targeted customer segments (Hormazi, 2004) Harrah’s Casinos uses data mining to send over 20 million tailored offers to its customers on an annual basis (Meltzer, 2004)

The End . . . Happy Mining!