Data Mining Tasks

Data Mining Tasks

• The data mining tasks can be classified
generally into two types based on what a
specific task tries to achieve. Those two
categories are descriptive tasks and predictive
tasks. The descriptive data mining tasks
characterize the general properties of data
whereas predictive data mining tasks perform
inference on the available data set to predict
how a new data set will behave.
Different Data Mining Tasks
 Different Data Mining Tasks

• Predictive data mining tasks come up with a model from

the available data set that is helpful in predicting
unknown or future values of another data set of
interest. A medical practitioner trying to diagnose a
disease based on the medical test results of a patient
can be considered as a predictive data mining task.
• Descriptive data mining tasks usually finds data
describing patterns and comes up with new, significant
information from the available data set. A retailer trying
to identify products that are purchased together can be
considered as a descriptive data mining task.
 Classification
Classification derives a model to determine the class of an object
based on its attributes. A collection of records will be available,
each record with a set of attributes. One of the attributes will be
class attribute and the goal of classification task is assigning a
class attribute to new set of records as accurately as possible.
Classification can be used in direct marketing, that is to reduce
marketing costs by targeting a set of customers who are likely to
buy a new product. Using the available data, it is possible to
know which customers purchased similar products and who did
not purchase in the past. Hence, {purchase, don’t purchase}
decision forms the class attribute in this case. Once the class
attribute is assigned, demographic and lifestyle information of
customers who purchased similar products can be collected and
promotion mails can be sent to them directly.
Classification has two types of variables
A. explanatory variables – which defines the
essential properties of data
B. Target variables – whose values can be
determined
It is used to predicate the value of discrete
target variable
 Prediction

• Prediction task predicts the possible values of

missing or future data. Prediction involves
developing a model based on the available data
and this model is used in predicting future values
of a new data set of interest. For example, a model
can predict the income of an employee based on
education, experience and other demographic
factors like place of stay, gender etc. Also
prediction analysis is used in different areas
including medical diagnosis, fraud detection etc.
 Time - Series Analysis
• Time series is a sequence of events where the
next event is determined by one or more of the
preceding events. Time series reflects the process
being measured and there are certain
components that affect the behavior of a process.
Time series analysis includes methods to analyze
time-series data in order to extract useful
patterns, trends, rules and statistics. Stock market
prediction is an important application of time-
series analysis.
 Outlier Analysis in Data Mining
What are Outliers?
• Outliers are an integral part of data analysis. An outlier can be
defined as observation point that lies in a distance from other
observations.
• An outlier is important as it specifies an error in the experiment.
Outliers are extensively used in various areas such as detecting
frauds, introducing potential new trends in the market and others.
• Usually, outliers are confused with noise. However, outliers are
different from noise data in the following sense:
• Noise is a random error, but outlier is an observation point that is
situated away from different observations.
• Noise should be removed for better outlier detection.
 Various causes of outliers in Data Mining

• It is used in identifying the frauds in banking

sectors such as credit card hacking or any
similar frauds.
• It is used in observing the change in trends of
buying patterns of a customer.
• It is used in identifying the typing errors and
reporting errors made by humans.
• It is used in discovering the errors or faults in
machines or systems.
What is the need of handling the outliers in Data Mining?

• Outliers affect the results of the databases.

• Outliers often give useful or beneficial results
and conclusions due to which various trends
or patterns can be recorded.
• Outliers can be beneficial in research
department also. They can be extremely
useful in some discovery.
• Outliers are the key branches of data mining.
Applications of Outlier Detection in Data Mining

• In Data Mining, Outlier Detection is extensively used. It is

used to obtain patterns or trends in data mining. The
applications of Outlier Detection in Data Mining are given
below:
• Fraud Detection
• Telecom Fraud Detection
• Intrusion Detection in Cyber Security
• Medical Analysis
• Environment Monitoring such as Cyclone, Tsunami, Floods,
Drought and so on
• Noticing unforeseen entries in Databases
 Different approaches in Outlier Detection
• There are majorly three approaches observed
in outlier detection. Those approaches are
given below:
• The Statistical Approach
• The Distance Based Approach
• The Deviation Based Approach
 Regression in data mining
• A data mining technique that is used to
predict the numeric values in a given data set.
For example, regression might be used to
predict the product or service cost or other
variables. It is also used in various industries
for business and marketing behavior, trend
analysis, and financial forecast.
 Application of Regression

• Regression is a very popular technique, and it has

wide applications in businesses and industries.
The regression procedure involves the predictor
variable and response variable. The major
application of regression is given below.
• Environmental modeling
• Analyzing Business and marketing behavior
• Financial predictors or forecasting
• Analyzing the new trends and patterns.
 Difference between Regression and
Classification in data mining
• Regression and classification are quite similar to each other.
Classification and Regression are two significant prediction
issues that are used in data mining. If you have given a
training set of inputs and outputs and learn a function that
relates the two, that hopefully enables you to predict outputs
given inputs on new data. The only difference is that in
classification, the outputs are discrete, whereas, in
regression, the outputs are not. But the concepts are
blurred, as in "logistic regression", which can be interpreted
as either a classification or a regression method. So, it
becomes difficult for the user to understand when to use
classification and regression.
 Association
• Association discovers the association or connection
among a set of items. Association identifies the
relationships between objects. Association analysis is
used for commodity management, advertising, catalog
design, direct marketing etc. A retailer can identify the
products that normally customers purchase together
or even find the customers who respond to the
promotion of same kind of products. If a retailer finds
that beer and nappy are bought together mostly, he
can put nappies on sale to promote the sale of beer.
 Clustering
• Clustering is used to identify data objects that are
similar to one another. The similarity can be
decided based on a number of factors like
purchase behavior, responsiveness to certain
actions, geographical locations and so on. For
example, an insurance company can cluster its
customers based on age, residence, income etc.
This group information will be helpful to
understand the customers better and hence
provide better customized services.
 Summarization

• Summarization is the generalization of data. A set of

relevant data is summarized which result in a smaller
set that gives aggregated information of the data. For
example, the shopping done by a customer can be
summarized into total products, total spending, offers
used, etc. Such high level summarized information
can be useful for sales or customer relationship team
for detailed customer and purchase behavior analysis.
Data can be summarized in different abstraction
levels and from different angles.