Data Mining

[Page 837]Data mining consists of searching for meaningful patterns in large amounts of data. A pattern is meaningful if it is something people did not know before and it remains consistently accurate in new data. Data mining is usually done in teams with participants who have expertise in the business domain, in information technology, and in analytics.

This entry compares data mining with traditional statistics, covers the industry-standard process for data mining, briefly describes the major techniques used, and raises issues of concern about its application. While some people view collecting and storing the massive amounts of data necessary to do data mining as a way to deliver more customized content of use to the consumer, others view it as a potential violation of privacy.