Define data mining and list of some of its typical characteristics Discuss some ethical issues related to data mining?

Answer 1

Definitions the non trivial extraction of implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from data William J Frawley, Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro and Christopher J Matheus variety of techniques to identify nuggets of information or decision-making knowledge in bodies of data, and extracting these in such a way that they can be put to use in the areas such as decision support, prediction, forecasting and estimation. The data is often voluminous, but as it stands of low value as no direct use can be made of it; it is the hidden information in the data that is useful Characteristics of a data mining system • Large quantities of data o volume of data so great it has to be analysed by automated techniques e.g. POS, satellite information, credit card transactions etc. • Noisy, incomplete data o imprecise data is characteristic of all data collection o databases - usually contaminated by errors, cannot assume that the data they contain is entirely correct e.g. some attributes rely on subjective or measurement judgments • Complex data structure - conventional statistical analysis not possible • Heterogeneous data stored in legacy systems