Data Mining

Data mining is an analytical business process which applies business knowledge to data in order to achieve business goals, creating new business knowledge and often using predictive modelling algorithms. Predictive modelling algorithms are also called “data mining algorithms”; most originate in the fields of machine learning and statistics.

Data mining produces two kinds of results:

· New business knowledge, often called “insight”, and

· Predictive models (or “data mining models”) which can make predictions automatically.

The first of these, new knowledge, is used by people in organisations to improve the strategy, tactics and operational decision-making of the organisations.

The second type of result from data mining, predictive models, are programs which can score or classify new examples, based on the patterns in the data that was used to create the models. These predictive models are used within an organisation’s IT systems in order to provide enhanced information and assist decision-making.

Data Mining & Predictive Analytics

Tom Khabaza