Data Mining and Profiling in Big Data

Data mining and profiling are technologies used for analyzing and interpreting large amounts of data (a set of facts) to obtain knowledge (patterns in the data that are interesting and certain enough for a user). In the information society, vast amounts of data are collected, stored, and processed by both public and private organizations. When dealing with large data sets, particularly in the context of big data, human intuition may be insufficient to obtain insight into or an overview of the data available.

Data mining and group profiling are considered separate technologies, even though they are often used together. Whereas the focus of data mining is on finding novel patterns and relations in data sets, the focus of profiling is on ascribing characteristics to individuals or groups of people. Profiling may be carried out without the use of data mining, and vice versa. In some cases, profiling may not involve (much) technology—for instance, when psychologically profiling a serial killer.