Basics of Modeling in a Data Mining Context

Data mining has become an industry buzz word, but what is it and how does it differ from traditional statistical methods? This paper addresses these questions by discussing the modeling process involved in data mining. The emphasis is on the process and model evaluation with only brief mention of modeling techniques. SAS ® Enterprise Miner is used to demonstrate certain aspects of the process. Data Mining Data mining has become a hot topic, but what is it? A couple of definitions found in the data mining literature give some insight into this question. Data mining is the analysis of (often large) observational data sets to find unsuspected relationships and to summarize the data in novel ways that are both understandable and useful to the data owner.1 Data mining is the process of selection, exploration, and modeling of large quantities of data to discover regularities or relations that are at first unknown with the aim of obtaining clear and useful results for the owner of the database.2 These definitions indicate that first, data mining involves a process. This helps organize your approach to