Data Mining?? 8

[aljubicic]

Hi all,

Could someone explain to me in layman's terms what is Data Mining and the mechanics of it ??

Regards
Anthony

 

[eyeswideclosed]

What IS new are all the off-the-shelf tools available now to do it, before it was a manual process or we had to write our own tools.

If more than 1 goose are geese, why aren't more than 1 moose meese??

 

[Predictor]

No, this is absolutely incorrect. The result of a data mining operation is a statistical model: code, essentially, not data. The whole point of performing data mining is to be able to make inferences about future behavior.

As an example, below is a (denatured) model I recently produced for a bank. The goal was to predict whether individual customers will repay loans. In this case, it is a logistic regression run over a single table of data. The resulting code is intended to generate predictions (probability estimates) about future cases, not summarizing old ones:

XModelLinear =
-0.12405053679991 +
-0.00232402562179 * PRIOR_AVAILABLE +
-0.4963737314753 * DOB +
-0.82299458796435 * cnt_4247 +
-0.48519697312454 * cnt_5341 +
0.5056754163603 * cnt_7831 +
2.32062670810524 * cnt_4939 +
1.9624082049473 * cnt_7961 +
0.67703628829194 * cnt_5643 +
0.00213194069755 * amt_5754 +
-0.0006523147294 * Att_amt_off +
0.11162160204319 * UtilCount +
0.0126422117559 * VeCount +
0.06749157992633 * CasCount +
5.71685305090582 * SCF416;

! Apply transfer function
XModel = 1 / (1 + exp(-XModelLinear));


-Will Dwinnell

http://will.dwinnell.com

 

[eyeswideclosed]

Ok man, searching for patterns and statistics in data to use in predictions is a brand new concept in human history, whatever you say.

If more than 1 goose are geese, why aren't more than 1 moose meese??

 

[Predictor]

I did not say that data analysis is new. I only said that it is not reporting, which is what you said.

-Will Dwinnell

http://will.dwinnell.com

 

[eyeswideclosed]

Oh, I didn't really mean it that way, but to me the compiled trend predictions are essentially a "report", at least that's the way I present them here, i.e. "here's the prediction analysis report on the old ladies who don't pay their bills on time".
Actually I'm just old and cranky and like to argue!
My favorite thing is to bait people into telling me what was the first relational database system, after a quick google they usually come back and say "IBM's System R from the 70s" Wrong! The ancient Egyptians had one 4,000 years ago, not computer based obviously, but one nonetheless.
I'm rambling I'll stop now.

If more than 1 goose are geese, why aren't more than 1 moose meese??