Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining for Predictive Analytics

The term data mining evokes an image of the old-time panner for gold—sifting through mounds of dirt trying to find those elusive valuable nuggets that make the whole process worthwhile. The translation into the information world is the data analyst sifting through terabytes of data looking for the corresponding knowledge nugget. This image is so powerful that the original meaning of data mining has been lost in the media hype that surrounds information exploitation. Now any information worker with a query tool connected to a database running ad hoc queries is called a “data miner,” and the concepts that I discuss in this chapter are lost in that translation.