Data Analysis : Data Mining

Data Mining. It is the process of discovering interesting knowledge that are gathered and significant structures from large amounts of data stored in data warehouse or other information storage.

Data mining is a very important component in today’s big data [22, 23]. Data mining is essential for everyone from large businesses to government organizations. It helps to identify trends, patterns and make predictions by exploring, comparing, researching and analyzing data.

Data Mining, a sub-branch of computer science, involving statistics, methods and calculations to find patterns in large amount of data sets, and database systems. Generally, data mining is the process to examine data from different aspects and summarizing it into meaningful information. Data mining techniques depict actions and future trends, allowing any individual to make better and knowledge-driven decisions.[1][2]

Today with the ever growing use of computers in the world, information is constantly moving from one place to another. What is this information, who is it about, and who is using it will be discussed in the following paper. The collecting, interpreting, and determination of use of this information has come to be known as data mining. This term known as data mining has been around only for a short time but the actual collection of data has been happening for centuries. The following paragraph will give a brief description of this history of data collection.

Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery) is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it, and summarize the relationships identified. Technically, data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases.

Data mining: is a process of discovering patterns in large data involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics, and database systems with the aim of extracting information and transforming it into an understandable structure for further use.

In its infancy, data mining was as limited as the hardware being used. Large amounts of data were difficult to analyze because the hardware simply could not handle it [1]. The term "data mining" first began appearing in the 1980 's largely within the research and computer science communities. In the 1990 's it was considered a subset of a process called Knowledge Discovery in Databases of KKD [1]. KKD analyzes data in the search for patterns that may not normally be recognized with the naked eye. Today however, data mining does not limit itself to databases,

Data mining allows companies to focus on the more important information in their data warehouses. Data mining can be broken down into two major categories. Automated prediction of trends and behaviors, and automated discovery of previously unknown patterns. In the first category, data mining automates the process of finding predictive information in large databases. Questions that traditionally required exhaustive hands-on analysis can now be quickly answered directly from data. In the second category, data mining tools sweep through databases and identify previously hidden patterns in one step. This category is where the major focus of research has been on.

In order for business to harness big data, we must first look at how big data is created and stored. Computers throughout the world obtain data through their hardware and software. The end results of this collection of data as of 2014 is 11.2 zettabytes. Only one half percent of the 11.2 zettabytes of data is structured and utilized today. This means that most data is not valuable because it is not sorted. A business cannot utilize big data unless it is structured in a way to help a business reach a goal. A way for the data to become useless is through data mining. Data mining is the practice of examining large databases in order to generate new information. This new information is practical and structured.

Suppose that we are responsible for managing product placement within a local supermarket.  Our shelving units have 6 shelves each and are numbered from 1 to 6—with 1 being the lowest shelf and proceeding upward until the highest shelf is assigned the number 6.  While there are many placement options that we should

Data mining is “[t]he process of finding significant, previously unknown, and potentially valuable knowledge hidden in data” (Gordon, 2007). Organizations use data mining to sift through massive quantities of raw data in order to find patterns and relationships that will ultimately be used for business purposes (Definition of: Data mining, 2016). Organizations mainly use data mining to get a better idea of their customer’s purchasing habits, product preferences, etc. in order to create sales tactics targeted at a certain customer demographic (Definition of: Data management, 2016).

With rapid advancements in the technology, new concepts are hitting the industry and it is redefining itself over a course of time. The data mining is one of its kind to improvise the lives of people. Data mining uses techniques which are helpful in finding out the different forms of data. The data mining is closely related to the database technology. Almost every industry takes the help of the datamining to grow in their respective fields. For instance, stock management, quality control, risk management, fraud detection, marketing and analysis of investments. It has its applications ranging from finding the molecule structure of the gene to identifying a robbery at an international level.

Data mining is a detection process that allows users to comprehend the substance and relationships amid the data. Data architect/designer punctiliously defines entities and relationships from operational or data warehouse system. The conclusion of data mining can be used to intensify the efficacy of performance from the users. Data mining uses various techniques such as inductive logic programming, pattern recognition, image analysis, bioinformatics, spatial data analysis, decision support systems etc. for this sort of analysis.

Data Mining is defined as extracting information from huge sets of data. In other words, we can say that data mining is the procedure of mining knowledge from data. There is a huge amount of data available in the Information Industry. This data is of no use until it is converted into useful information. It is necessary to analyse this huge amount of data and extract useful information from it. Extraction of information is not the only process we need to perform; data mining also involves other processes such as Data Cleaning, Data Integration, Data Transformation, Data Mining, Pattern Evaluation and Data Presentation [12].

Data has always been analyzed within companies and used to help benefit the future of businesses. However, the evolution of how the data stored, combined, analyzed and used to predict the pattern and tendencies of consumers has evolved as technology has seen numerous advancements throughout the past century. In the 1900s databases began as “computer hard disks” and in 1965, after many other discoveries including voice recognition, “the US Government plans the world’s first data center to store 742 million tax returns and 175 million sets of fingerprints on magnetic tape.” The evolution of data and how it evolved into forming large databases continues in 1991 when the internet began to pop up and “digital storage became more cost effective than paper. And with the constant increase of the data supplied digitally, Hadoop was created in 2005 and from that point forward there was “14.7 Exabytes of new information are produced this year" and this number is rapidly increasing with a lot of mobile devices the people in our society have today (Marr). The evolution of the internet and then the expansion of the number of mobile devices society has access to today led data to evolve and companies now need large central Database management systems in order to run an efficient and a successful business.