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12 views3 pages

data-mining-notes

Uploaded by

manishpal2003
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Data Mining: A Comprehensive Study Guide

Overview and Motivation


Data mining emerges from the need to extract meaningful patterns and knowledge from
vast amounts of data. In today’s digital age, organizations collect enormous volumes of
data but face the challenge of turning this raw data into actionable insights.
The motivation behind data mining stems from several factors: - The explosive growth in
data volume and variety - The widening gap between data collection and data understanding
- The need for automated analysis tools to handle large datasets - The value of discovering
hidden patterns for business decision-making

Definition and Functionalities


Data mining is the process of discovering interesting patterns and knowledge from large
amounts of data. Its core functionalities include:

1. Pattern Discovery: Finding recurring relationships, trends, and correlations within


data
2. Classification: Organizing data into predefined categories
3. Clustering: Grouping similar data points without predefined categories
4. Prediction: Forecasting future values based on historical patterns
5. Association Analysis : Identifying relationships between variables
6. Anomaly Detection: Finding unusual patterns that deviate from expected behavior

Data Processing
Data processing forms the foundation of successful data mining. It involves transforming
raw data into a format suitable for analysis. The process follows several key stages:

Data Pre-processing
Pre-processing is crucial as real-world data is often incomplete, noisy, and inconsistent.
The main forms include:
1. Data Cleaning
Handling Missing Values:
Ignore the tuple (record)
Fill manually
Use global constant
Use attribute mean/median
Use most probable value through prediction
Dealing with Noisy Data through:
Binning:
Sort data and partition into equal-sized bins
Smooth by bin means, median, or boundaries
Clustering:
Group similar data points
Detect and remove outliers
Regression:
Fit data to a function
Smooth by predicting values
Human and Computer Inspection:
Combined approach using automated tools and expert knowledge
2. Data Integration
Merging data from multiple sources
Resolving conflicts in attribute names
Handling redundancy
Ensuring consistent measurement units
3. Data Transformation
Normalization: Scaling values to specific ranges
Aggregation: Combining multiple attributes
Feature construction: Creating new attributes
Smoothing: Removing noise from data

Data Reduction
Data reduction techniques help manage large datasets by reducing volume while
maintaining integrity:

1. Data Cube Aggregation


Creating summary data at different levels of granularity
Example: Daily sales data aggregated to monthly levels

2. Dimensionality Reduction
Reducing the number of random variables
Methods include:
Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
Feature selection
Feature extraction

3. Data Compression
Transforming data into compact representations
Lossless vs. lossy compression techniques
Trade-off between size and information preservation

4. Numerosity Reduction
Storing reduced representations of data
Methods:
Parametric (regression, log-linear models)
Non-parametric (histograms, clustering, sampling)

5. Discretization and Concept Hierarchy


Converting continuous data to discrete intervals
Building hierarchical relationships
Types:
Equal-width binning
Equal-frequency binning
Chi-merge method

Decision Trees
Decision trees are powerful classification tools in data mining:

1. Structure
Root node: Starting point
Internal nodes: Test conditions
Branches: Outcomes of tests
Leaf nodes: Class labels
2. Construction Process
Select best attribute for splitting
Create branch for each attribute value
Repeat process recursively
Stop when meeting termination criteria
3. Advantages
Easy to understand and interpret
Handles both numerical and categorical data
Requires little data preparation
Can handle missing values
4. Key Algorithms
ID3
C4.5
CART
Random Forest

Exam Tips
1. Focus Areas
Understand the complete data preprocessing workflow
Know different types of data reduction techniques
Master decision tree concepts
Practice identifying scenarios for different cleaning methods
2. Common Question Types
Definition and explanation of key concepts
Comparing different techniques
Step-by-step problem solving
Real-world applications
3. Important Formulas/Calculations
Information gain for decision trees
Distance metrics for clustering
Normalization formulas
Sampling calculations

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