Introduction to Data Mining – Overview

In Data Mining Data is the plural of the word Datum, Data has several meanings in different content be it Raw facts and figures, etc. It can be used as a primary input to produce meaningful information.

Data is raw facts and figures, we apply processing in the form of calculations. algorithms etc. to produce some output. That output is the processed form of the data and hence termed information.

Mining: From the name itself we can make out that mining is a process of digging and searching for valuable minerals from the Earth. Data Mining can be termed or viewed as a result of the natural evolution of information technology Basically, it refers to the interaction of useful business information from large databases

Data mining has attracted a great deal of attention in the information industry due to the wide availability of a wide amount of data and also an urgent need to turn such data into useful information and hence impart knowledge.

Starting from the evolution of the era of computers, business organizations had a very small volume of customers, but later in the 1990’s a tremendous change took place which showed a rise in several customers for such organizations.

The reason why warehouses have been introduced is to keep this valuable data of customers in an accumulated and consistent form such that it provides a guarantee of secure storage.

The difference between Data warehousing and Data Mining can lead to confusion What motivates data mining? Why do we need it?

Motivation for Data Mining

Data mining can be considered a result of the natural evolution of information technology. The database system industry has witnessed an evolutionary, path in following development areas

1. Data collection & database creation.
2. Advanced-Data Analysis (Including data warehousing and data mining)
3. Data Management (Including data storage and retrieval)

This technology has provided a boost to the database and information technology industry Also provided immense numbers of databases and information repositories and also made them available for transaction management, information retrieval, and data analysis.

Data mining can be considered a result of the natural evolution of information technology. The evolution can be predicted and viewed by the following figure

With the evolution of database and information technology, computer hardware has also progressed and thereby provided a better, and efficient, and powerful storage media This technology provides a great boost to the database and information industry and makes a huge number of databases and information repositories available for transaction management information retrieval and data analysis.

Data can now be stored in many different types of databases and repositories. Repository database architecture that has recently emerged is the data warehouse, a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources, organized under a unified schema at a single site to facilitate management decision making Data warehouse technology includes data cleaning, data integration, and online analytical processing techniques with functionalities such as summarization, consolidation, and arrogation as well as the ability to view information at different angles. Although OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools support multidimensional analysis and decision making additional data analysis tools are required for in-depth analysis. Such as data classification, clustering, and the characterization of data changes over time.