Scope of Data Mining
Scope of Data Mining
2. Automated prediction of trends and behaviors. Data mining automates the process of finding
predictive information in large databases. Questions that traditionally required extensive hands-on
analysis can now be answered directly from the data — quickly. A typical example of a predictive problem
is targeted marketing. Data mining uses data on past promotional mailings to identify the targets most
likely to maximize return on investment in future mailings. Other predictive problems include forecasting
bankruptcy and other forms of default, and identifying segments of a population likely to respond similarly
to given events.
3. Automated discovery of previously unknown patterns. Data mining tools sweep through databases
and identify previously hidden patterns in one step. An example of pattern discovery is the analysis of
retail sales data to identify seemingly unrelated products that are often purchased together. Other pattern
discovery problems include detecting fraudulent credit card transactions and identifying anomalous data
that could represent data entry keying errors.
4. Data mining techniques can yield the benefits of automation on existing software and
hardware platforms
5. Data mining can be implemented on new systems as existing platforms are upgraded
and new products developed.
When data mining tools are implemented on high performance parallel processing
systems, they can analyze massive databases in minutes. Faster processing means that users
can automatically experiment with more models to understand complex data. High speed makes
it practical for users to analyze huge quantities of data. Larger databases, in turn, yield improved
predictions.