1. Data Mining Relation to course: data mining (chap 28)
G15: Dillon Littlefield & Nathan Moeller
Zimmer, Carl. "Bacterial Ecosystems Divide People Into 3 Groups, Scientists Say." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Apr Web. 10 Apr

2. Classification vs Clustering
Criteria
Classification
Clustering
Prior Knowledge of classes
Yes No
Use case
Classify new sample into known classes
Suggest groups based on patterns in data
Algorithms
Decision Trees, Bayesian classifiers
K-means, Expectation Maximization
Data Needs
Labeled samples from a set of classes
Unlabeled samples

3. Bacterial Ecosystems
Blood types fall into classes A, B, AB, and O. What about gut ecosystems?
Each gut has a unique population of microbes.
Research suggests there may be three distinct types of microbiomes called enterotypes.

4. Medical Applications Tailor diets to specific enterotypes
Tailor drug prescriptions to enterotypes
Alternative to antibiotics: restore good bacteria to gut

5. Challenge Each person has 100 trillion microbes
Each enterotype is a balance of many bacterial species
Debate not settled: UMN professor Dan Knights suggests for continuum

6. Classification vs Clustering
Categorize each question as a classification or clustering problem:
What is the blood type of the patient?
Based on gut bacteria ecosystems, do human fall into a small number of distinct groups?
How many natural groups do humans fall into based on their gut-bacteria ecosystem?