What is Data Mining?

The term data mining has been used to mean anything from ad hoc queries, rules-based notifications, or pivot-chart analysis.

Data mining is the process of analyzing data to find hidden patterns using automatic methodologies. This type of data mining is often referred to using other terms such as machine learning, knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), or predictive analytics.

By far, the trendiest term today is predictive analytics,which many companies ironically are using to differentiate what they do from ‘‘data mining.’’ The inherent implication is that data mining is limited to the discovery of patterns, whereas predictive analytics allows the application of the patterns to new data to impute (or predict) unknown values. The motivation behind using the term predictive analytics is precisely this dilution of the meaning of data mining as it has been used in recent years. Predictive analytics, however, is an incomplete term because it ignores the descriptive nature of data mining. Therefore, until a marketing genius comes up with a clever, meaningless name like ‘‘Sparky,’’ the term we use will remain data mining.

 

Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Jamie MacLennan
ZhaoHui Tang
Bogdan Crivat