Understanding Data Mining

Understanding Data Mining

Data mining is the way that businesspeople can explore data independently, make informative discoveries, and put that information to work in everyday business. You don’t need to be an expert in statistics, a scientist, or a computer programmer to be a data miner. You don’t need mountains of data or special computers to do data mining. Data miners are ordinary, motivated people who complement their business knowledge with the fundamentals of data analysis

Data can be a valuable resource for business, government, and nonprofit organizations, but quantity isn’t what’s important about it. A greater quantity of data does not guarantee better understanding or competitive advantage. In fact, used well, a little bit of relevant data provides more value than any poorly used huge database. As a data miner, it’s your mission to make
the most of the data you have. Data miners have to work and think to make valuable discoveries - There's no simple magic. It’s a craft, one that mere mortals learn every day. You can find out about it, too

Data mining is the way that ordinary businesspeople use a range of data analysis techniques to uncover useful information from data and put that information into practical use. Data miners use tools designed to help the work go quickly. They don’t fuss over theory and assumptions. They validate their discoveries by testing. And they understand that things change, so when the discovery that worked like a charm yesterday doesn’t hold up today, they adapt

Data mining helps you understand how the elements of your business relate to one another. It provides clues about actions that you can take to make your business run more smoothly and generate more revenue. It can help you identify where you can cut costs without damaging the organization, and where spending brings the best returns

Some people expect data mining to be so easy that they will only need to feed data into the right software and a tidy summary of valuable information will automatically pop out. Some expect data mining to produce great results even if the data miner doesn’t know what anything in the data means. These are all unrealistic. Many novice data miners find that a few days of training and a month of practicing what they have learned are enough to get them ready to begin producing usable, valuable results. You do need to have some basic computer skills and a feel for numbers. You must also have patience and the ability to work in a methodical way

Data mining is hard work. It takes patience, organization, and effort