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DATA MINING: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Article in European Scientific Journal · July 2015

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 European Scientific Journal July 2015 edition vol.11, No.21 ISSN: 1857 – 7881 (Print) e - ISSN 1857- 7431

DATA MINING: A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

Matthew N. O. Sadiku,
Adebowale E. Shadare
Sarhan M. Musa
Roy G. Perry College of Engineering, Prairie View A&M University
Prairie View, USA

Abstract
Data mining may be regarded as the process of discovering insightful
and predictive models from massive data. It is the art of extracting useful
information from large amounts of data. It combines traditional data analysis
with sophisticated algorithms for processing large amount of data. It is an
interdisciplinary field merging concepts from database systems, statistics,
machine learning, computing, information theory, and pattern recognition.
It has the real potential of becoming part of electrical engineering education.
The main objective of this paper is to provide a brief introduction to data
mining.

Keywords:

Introduction
Technology now enables us to capture and store massive amount of
data. It has been estimated that more than 15 exabytes of new data is
generated each year. With the popular use of the World Wide Web and its
associated information services, such as Google, Yahoo, Excite, InfoSeek,
and American Online, our capacity to generate and collect data has increased
tremendously. This explosive growth has caused the need for techniques that
will assist us in transforming the data into useful information and
knowledge.1
Data are numbers, text or facts that can be processed by a computer.
They may take the form of transactional data such as sales, prices, payroll,
and accounting. For example, you generate data when you make a purchase
using your credit card or when you surf the Web. With the trends in
centralization of an organization’s data in large databases, the process of
extracting useful information is now known as data mining.
The concept of data mining has attracted a lot of attention in recent
years. It was started in the early 1990s by Tom Khabaza. Data mining, also

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known as knowledge discovery databases (KDD), is the process of

extracting useful patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data. It
may also be regarded as the process of analyzing data from different
perspective and summarizing it into useful information. It is an
interdisciplinary subfield of computer science. As shown in Figure 1, data
mining involves artificial intelligence, machine learning, database systems,
pattern recognition, warehousing, data visualization, and statistics.

How does data mining work?

The process of extracting information can be likened to extracting
metal from ore. Data mining should be regarded as a process. The process
involves the following steps:
(1) Efficient data storage and data processing
(2) Decide on the number of variables to be investigated
(3) Data needs to be visualized and summarized
(4) Apply statistics such as mean, percentiles, standard deviation, and
correlation
(5) Apply analysis methods such as regression, nearest neighbor
methods, k-mean clustering, etc.
(6) Implement insights gained from the analysis.
These are the steps generally taken in a data mining. But there are
some process models for data mining. The most popular one is the Cross-
Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM). This is an open
standard for data mining. It was proposed in the mid-1990s by a European
consortium of companies. It is illustrated in Figure 2. Each project begins
with business understanding and steps through the five phases of the
process.2-4
• Business Understanding: This involves defining what your
organization intends to achieve with the project and producing a project plan.
• Data Understanding: This phase starts with gathering data and
proceeds with verifying its quality making sure it is good enough to support
your goals.
• Data Preparation: This phase includes cleaning as well as selection
of any necessary training and test samples. Data miners spend most of their
time on this phase.
• Modeling: In this phase, specific modeling techniques are selected
and applied on the data. Typically, there are several techniques for the same
data mining problem.
• Evaluation: This involves reviewing the models to determine the
accuracy in meeting the goals and objectives of the project. If the model does
not satisfy their expectations, they go back to the modeling phase.

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• Deployment: This involves presenting the knowledge gained in a

way that the customer can use, such as a table or graph. In many cases it will
be the customer, not the data analyst, who will carry out the deployment step.
It does not mean that one person will be responsible for all the
phases. It is a team effort.

Applications of Data Mining

The potential of data mining is great. Data mining has been applied
with considerable success in business, retail industry, telecommunications,
intrusion detection, biological data analysis, healthcare, geosciences, and
computer security. We will consider some of these.5-7
• Intrusion Detection: By intrusion, we mean any kind of action that
threatens integrity, confidentiality, or availability of network resources. Data
mining technology may be applied for intrusion detection by developing data
mining algorithm for intrusion detection.
• Telecommunication: Telecommunication industry provides various
services such as fax, pager, cellular phone, Internet messenger, images, e-
mail, web data transmission, etc. Data mining in telecommunication industry
helps in identifying the telecommunication patterns, catch fraudulent
activities, make better use of resource, and improve quality of service.
• Business: Two of the most important business areas are finance, in
particular in banks and insurance companies, and e-business. The financial
data in banking and financial industry is generally reliable and of high
quality which facilitates the systematic data analysis and data mining.
• Retail Industry: Data mining has its great application in retail
industry because it collects large amount of data from on sales, customer
purchasing history, goods transportation, consumption and services. The data
mining helps in identifying customer buying patterns and trends. This leads
to improved quality of customer service and good customer retention and
satisfaction. Data mining can also help businesses account for peak periods
of consumption, merchandise throughput, and irregular transactions.
• Geosciences: According to the data mining techniques, the
petrophysical data are applied to find the relations and forecast reservoirs.
The logging data are employed to evaluate the fuzzy reservoirs and
recognize the effective reservoirs in complicated geological conditions.
• Healthcare: In healthcare, data mining is becoming increasingly
essential. For example, data mining can help healthcare insurers detect fraud
and abuse, healthcare organizations make customer relationship management
decisions, physicians identify effective treatments and best practices, and
patients receive more affordable healthcare services.

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Conclusion
Data mining is the task of discovering useful patterns from a large
amount of data. The field of data mining is relatively new; it is recognized
as a rapidly emerging research area. Although it would not hurt to have
some exposure to statistical analysis, one does not need to be an expert in
statistics or a computer programmer to be a data miner.
Data has spread its wings in almost all areas.8-10 It has the real
potential of becoming part of electrical engineering education. The Society
of Data Miners (www.socdm.org) founded in 2013 is helpful for advancing
knowledge and career.

References:
I.H. Witten and E. Frank, Data Mining (Moran Kaufmann Publishers,
Amsterdam, 2005, 2nd ed.).
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M. S. Brown, Data Mining for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken,
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Figure 1 Data mining as an interdisciplinary field (Adapted from Han and Kamber, 2006).

Figure 2 The CRISP-DM process.

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