Data Mining - Tasks

Introduction
Data Mining deals with what kind of patterns can be mined. On the basis of kind of data to be
mined there are two kind of functions involved in Data Mining, that are listed below:

Descriptive

Classification and Prediction

Descriptive
The descriptive function deals with general properties of data in the database. Here is the list of
descriptive functions:

Class/Concept Description

Mining of Frequent Patterns

Mining of Associations

Mining of Correlations

Mining of Clusters
Class/Concept Description
Class/Concepts refers the data to be associated with classes or concepts. For example, in a
company classes of items for sale include computer and printers, and concepts of customers
include big spenders and budget spenders.Such descriptions of a class or a concept are called
class/concept descriptions. These descriptions can be derived by following two ways:

Data Characterization - This refers to summarizing data of class under study. This class
under study is called as Target Class.
Data Discrimination - It refers to mapping or classification of a class with some
predefined group or class.
Mining of Frequent Patterns
Frequent patterns are those patterns that occur frequently in transactional data. Here is the list of
kind of frequent patterns:

Frequent Item Set - It refers to set of items that frequently appear together for example
milk and bread.

Frequent Subsequence- A sequence of patterns that occur frequently such as purchasing

a camera is followed by memory card.
Frequent Sub Structure - Substructure refers to different structural forms, such as
graphs, trees, or lattices, which may be combined with itemsets or subsequences.
Mining of Association
Associations are used in retail sales to identify patterns that are frequently purchased together.
This process refers to process of uncovering the relationship among data and determining
association rules.
For example A retailer generates association rule that show that 70% of time milk is sold with
bread and only 30% of times biscuits are sold with bread.
Mining of Correlations
It is kind of additional analysis performed to uncover interesting statistical correlations between
associated-attribute- value pairs or between two item Sets to analyze that if they have positive,
negative or no effect on each other.
Mining of Clusters
Cluster refers to a group of similar kind of objects. Cluster analysis refers to forming group of
objects that are very similar to each other but are highly different from the objects in other
clusters.
Classification and Prediction
Classification is the process of finding a model that describes the data classes or concepts. The
purpose is to be able to use this model to predict the class of objects whose class label is
unknown. This derived model is based on analysis of set of training data. The derived model can
be presented in the following forms:

Classification (IF-THEN) Rules

Decision Trees

Mathematical Formulae

Neural Networks
Here is the list of functions involved in this:

Classification - It predicts the class of objects whose class label is unknown.Its objective
is to find a derived model that describes and distinguishes data classes or concepts. The Derived
Model is based on analysis set of training data i.e the data object whose class label is well
known.

Prediction - It is used to predict missing or unavailable numerical data values rather than
class labels. Regression Analysis is generally used for prediction.Prediction can also be used for
identification of distribution trends based on available data.
Outlier Analysis - The Outliers may be defined as the data objects that do not comply
with general behaviour or model of the data available.
Evolution Analysis - Evolution Analysis refers to description and model regularities or
trends for objects whose behaviour changes over time.
Data Mining Task Primitives

We can specify the data mining task in form of data mining query.

This query is input to the system.

The data mining query is defined in terms of data mining task primitives.
Note: Using these primitives allow us to communicate in interactive manner with the data
mining system. Here is the list of Data Mining Task Primitives:

Set of task relevant data to be mined

Kind of knowledge to be mined

Background knowledge to be used in discovery process

Interestingness measures and thresholds for pattern evaluation

Representation for visualizing the discovered patterns

SET OF TASK RELEVANT DATA TO BE MINED
This is the portion of database in which the user is interested. This portion includes the
following:

Database Attributes

Data Warehouse dimensions of interest

KIND OF KNOWLEDGE TO BE MINED
It refers to the kind of functions to be performed. These functions are:

Characterization

Discrimination

Association and Correlation Analysis

Classification

Prediction

Clustering

Outlier Analysis

Evolution Analysis
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE TO BE USED IN DISCOVERY PROCESS
The background knowledge allow data to be mined at multiple level of abstraction. For example
the Concept hierarchies are one of the background knowledge that allow data to be mined at
multiple level of abstraction.
INTERESTINGNESS MEASURES AND THRESHOLDS FOR PATTERN EVALUATION
This is used to evaluate the patterns that are discovers by the process of knowledge discovery.
There are different interestingness measures for different kind of knowledge.
REPRESENTATION FOR VISUALIZING THE DISCOVERED PATTERNS
This refers to the form in which discovered patterns are to be displayed. These representations
may include the following:

Rules

Tables

Charts

Graphs

Decision Trees

Cubes

Data Mining - Issues

Introduction
Data mining is not that easy. The algorithm used are very complex. The data is not available at
one place it needs to be integrated form the various heterogeneous data sources. These factors
also creates some issues. Here in this tutorial we will discuss the major issues regarding:

Mining Methodology and User Interaction

Performance Issues

Diverse Data Types Issues

The following diagram describes the major issues.

Mining Methodology and User Interaction Issues

It refers to the following kind of issues:

Mining different kinds of knowledge in databases. - The need of different users is not
the same. And Different user may be in interested in different kind of knowledge. Therefore it is
necessary for data mining to cover broad range of knowledge discovery task.

Interactive mining of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction. - The data mining

process needs to be interactive because it allows users to focus the search for patterns, providing
and refining data mining requests based on returned results.
Incorporation of background knowledge. - To guide discovery process and to express
the discovered patterns, the background knowledge can be used. Background knowledge may be
used to express the discovered patterns not only in concise terms but at multiple level of
abstraction.
Data mining query languages and ad hoc data mining. - Data Mining Query language
that allows the user to describe ad hoc mining tasks, should be integrated with a data warehouse
query language and optimized for efficient and flexible data mining.
Presentation and visualization of data mining results. - Once the patterns are
discovered it needs to be expressed in high level languages, visual representations. This
representations should be easily understandable by the users.
Handling noisy or incomplete data. - The data cleaning methods are required that can
handle the noise, incomplete objects while mining the data regularities. If data cleaning methods
are not there then the accuracy of the discovered patterns will be poor.
Pattern evaluation. - It refers to interestingness of the problem. The patterns discovered
should be interesting because either they represent common knowledge or lack novelty.
Performance Issues
It refers to the following issues:

Efficiency and scalability of data mining algorithms. - In order to effectively extract

the information from huge amount of data in databases, data mining algorithm must be efficient
and scalable.
Parallel, distributed, and incremental mining algorithms. - The factors such as huge
size of databases, wide distribution of data,and complexity of data mining methods motivate the
development of parallel and distributed data mining algorithms. These algorithm divide the data
into partitions which is further processed parallel. Then the results from the partitions is merged.
The incremental algorithms, updates databases without having mine the data again from scratch.
Diverse Data Types Issues
Handling of relational and complex types of data. - The database may contain complex
data objects, multimedia data objects, spatial data, temporal data etc. It is not possible for one
system to mine all these kind of data.
Mining information from heterogeneous databases and global information
systems. - The data is available at different data sources on LAN or WAN. These data source
may be structured, semi structured or unstructured. Therefore mining knowledge from them adds
challenges to data mining.

Data Mining - Themes

Theoretical Foundations of Data Mining
The various theories for basis of data mining includes the following:

Data Reduction - The basic idea of this theory is to reduce the data representation which
trades accuracy for speed in response to the need to obtain quick approximate answers to queries
on very large data bases.Some of the data reduction techniques are as follows:

Singular value Decomposition

Wavelets

Regression

Log-linear models

Histograms

Clustering

Sampling

Construction of Index Trees

Data Compression - The basic idea of this theory is to compress the given data by
encoding in terms of the following:

Bits

Association Rules

Decision Trees

Clusters

Pattern Discovery - The basic idea of this theory is to discover patterns occurring in the
database. Following are the areas that contributes to this theory:

Machine Learning

Neural Network

Association Mining

Sequential Pattern Matching

Clustering

Probability Theory - This theory is based on statistical theory. The basic idea behind this
theory is to discover joint probability distributions of random variables.
Probability Theory - According to this theory data mining is finding the patterns that are
interesting only to the extent that they can be used in the decision making process of some
enterprise.
Microeconomic View - As per the perception of this theory, the database schema consist
of data and patterns that are stored in the database. Therefore according to this theory data
mining is the task of performing induction on databases.
Inductive databases - Apart from the database oriented techniques, there are statistical
techniques also available for data analysis. These techniques can be applied to scientific data and
data from economic & social sciences as well.
Statistical Data Mining
Some of the Statistical Data Mining Techniques are as follows:

Regression - The regression methods are used to predict the value of response variable
from one or more predictor variables where the variables are numeric.Following are the several
forms of Regression:

Linear

Multiple

Weighted

Polynomial

Nonparametric

Robust

Generalized Linear Models - Generalized Linear Model includes:

Logistic Regression

Poisson Regression
The model's generalization allow a categorical response variable to be related to set of predictor
variables in manner similar to the modelling of numeric response variable using linear
regression.

Analysis of Variance - This technique analyzes:

Experimental data for two or more populations described by a numeric response

variable.

One or more categorical variables (factors).

Mixed-effect Models - These models are used for analyzing the grouped data. These
models describe the relationship between a response variable and some covariates in data
grouped according to one or more factors.
Factor Analysis - Factor Analysis Method is used to predict a categorical response
variable. This method assumes that independent variable follow a multivariate normal
distribution.
Time Series Analysis - Following are the methods for analyzing time-series data:

Autoregression Methods

Univariate ARIMA (AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average) Modeling

Long-memory time-series modeling

Visual Data Mining
Visual Data Mining uses data and/or knowledge visualization techniques to discover implicit
knowledge from the large data sets. The Visual Data MIning can be viewed as an integration of
following disciplines:

Data Visualization

Data Mining
Visual Data Mining is closely related to the following:

Computer Graphics

Multimedia Systems

Human Computer Interaction

Pattern Recognition

High performance computing

Generally data visualization and data mining can be integrated in the following ways:

Data Visualization - The data in the databases or the data warehouses can be viewed in
several visual forms that are listed below:

Boxplots

3-D Cubes

Data distribution charts

Curves

Surfaces

Link graphs etc.

Data Mining result Visualization - Data Mining Result Visualization is the presentation
of the results of data mining in visual forms. These visual forms could be scatter plots and
boxplots etc.
Data Mining Process Visualization - Data Mining Process Visualization presents the
several processes of data mining. This allows the users to see how the data are extracted. This
also allow the users to see from which database or data warehouse data are cleaned, integrated,
preprocessed, and mined.
Audio Data Mining
To indicate the patterns of data or the features of data mining results, Audio Data Mining makes
use of audio signals. By transforming patterns into sound and musing instead of watching
pictures, we can listen to pitches,tunes in order to identify anything interesting.
Data Mining and Collaborative Filtering
Today the consumer faced with large variety of goods and services while shopping. During live
customer transactions, the Recommender System helps the consumer by making product
recommendation. The Collaborative Filtering Approach is generally used for recommending
products to customers. These recommendations are based on the opinions of other customers.

Data Mining - Query Language

Introduction
The Data Mining Query Language was proposed by Han, Fu, Wang, et al for the DBMiner data
mining system. The Data Mining Query Language is actually based on Structured Query
Language (SQL). Data Mining Query Languages can be designed to support ad hoc and
interactive data mining. This DMQL provides commands for specifying primitives. The DMQL
can work with databases data warehouses as well. Data Mining Query Language can be used to
define data mining tasks. Particularly we examine how to define data warehouse and data marts
in Data Mining Query Language.
Task-Relevant Data Specification Syntax
Here is the syntax of DMQL for specifying the task relevant data:
use database database_name,
or
use data warehouse data_warehouse_name
in relevance to att_or_dim_list
from relation(s)/cube(s) [where condition]
order by order_list
group by grouping_list
Specifying Kind of Knowledge Syntax
Here we will discuss the syntax for Characterization, Discrimination, Association, Classification
and Prediction.
CHARACTERIZATION
The syntax for characterization is:
mine characteristics [as pattern_name]

analyze {measure(s) }
The analyze clause, specifies aggregate measures, such as count, sum, or count%.
For example:
Description describing customer purchasing habits.
mine characteristics as customerPurchasing
analyze count%
DISCRIMINATION
The syntax for Discrimination is:
mine comparison [as {pattern_name]}
For {target_class } where {t arget_condition }
{versus {contrast_class_i }
where {contrast_condition_i}}
analyze {measure(s) }
For Example, A user may define bigSpenders as customers who purchase items that costs $100
or more on average, and budgetSpenders as customers who purchase items at less than $100 on
average. The mining of discriminant descriptions for customers from each of these categories can
be specified in DMQL as:
mine comparison as purchaseGroups
for bigSpenders where avg(I.price) $100
versus budgetSpenders where avg(I.price)< $100
analyze count
ASSOCIATION
The syntax for Association is:
mine associations [ as {pattern_name} ]
{matching {metapattern} }
For Example:
mine associations as buyingHabits

matching P(X:customer,W) ^ Q(X,Y) buys(X,Z)

Note:Where, X is key of customer relation, P and Q are predicate variables and W,Y and Z are
object variables.
CLASSIFICATION
The syntax for Classification is:
mine classification [as pattern_name]
analyze classifying_attribute_or_dimension
For Example, To mine patterns classifying customer credit rating where the classes are
determined by the attribute credit_rating, mine classification as classifyCustomerCreditRating
analyze credit_rating
PREDICTION
The syntax for prediction is:
mine prediction [as pattern_name]
analyze prediction_attribute_or_dimension
{set {attribute_or_dimension_i= value_i}}
CONCEPT HIERARCHY SPECIFICATION SYNTAX
To specify what concept hierarchies to use:
use hierarchy <hierarchy> for <attribute_or_dimension>
We use different syntax to define different type of hierarchies such as:
-schema hierarchies
define hierarchy time_hierarchy on date as [date,month quarter,year]
set-grouping hierarchies
define hierarchy age_hierarchy for age on customer as
level1: {young, middle_aged, senior} < level0: all
level2: {20, ..., 39} < level1: young

level3: {40, ..., 59} < level1: middle_aged

level4: {60, ..., 89} < level1: senior
-operation-derived hierarchies
define hierarchy age_hierarchy for age on customer as
{age_category(1), ..., age_category(5)}
:= cluster(default, age, 5) < all(age)
-rule-based hierarchies
define hierarchy profit_margin_hierarchy on item as
level_1: low_profit_margin < level_0: all
if (price - cost)< $50
level_1: medium-profit_margin < level_0: all
if ((price - cost) > $50) and ((price - cost) $250))
level_1: high_profit_margin < level_0: all
INTERESTINGNESS MEASURES SPECIFICATION SYNTAX
Interestingness measures and thresholds can be specified by the user with the statement:
with <interest_measure_name> threshold = threshold_value
For Example:
with support threshold = 0.05
with confidence threshold = 0.7
PATTERN PRESENTATION AND VISUALIZATION SPECIFICATION SYNTAX
We have syntax which allows users to specify the display of discovered patterns in one or more
forms.
display as <result_form>
For Example :
display as table
Full Specification of DMQL

As a market manager of a Company , you would like to characterize the buying habits of
customers who purchase items priced at no less than $100, w.r.t customer's age, type of item
purchased, & place in which item was made. You would like to know the percentage of
customers having that characteristic. In particular, you are only interested in purchases made in
Canada, & paid for with an American Express("AmEx") credit card. You would like to view the
resulting descriptions in the form of a table.
use database AllElectronics_db
use hierarchy location_hierarchy for B.address
mine characteristics as customerPurchasing
analyze count%
in relevance to C.age,I.type,I.place_made
from customer C, item I, purchase P, items_sold S, branch B
where I.item_ID = S.item_ID and P.cust_ID = C.cust_ID and
P.method_paid = "AmEx" and B.address = "Canada" and I.price 100
with noise threshold = 5%
display as table
Data Mining Languages Standardization
Standardizing the Data Mining Languages will serve the following purposes:

Systematic Development of Data Mining Solutions.

Improve interoperability among multiple data mining systems and functions.

Promote the education.

Promote use of data mining systems in industry and society.

Data mining Tutorials
1. Suppose that the data for analysis includes the attribute age. The age values for the data tuples
are (in increasing order) 13, 15, 16, 16, 19, 20, 20, 21, 22, 22, 25, 25, 25, 25, 30, 33, 33, 35, 35, 35, 35,
36, 40, 45,46, 52, 70.
(a) What is the mean of the data? What is the median?
(b) What is the mode of the data? Comment on the datas modality (i.e., bimodal, trimodal, etc.).
(c) What is the midrange of the data?
(d) Give the five-number summary of the data.

Answer:
(a) What is the mean of the data? What is the median?
The (arithmetic) mean of the data is: x =
= 809/27 = 30 (Equation 2.1). The median (middlevalue of the ordered set, as the number of values in the
set is odd) of the data is: 25.

(b) What is the mode of the data? Comment on the datas modality (i.e., bimodal, trimodal, etc.).
This data set has two values that occur with the same highest frequency and is, therefore, bimodal.
The modes (values occurring with the greatest frequency) of the data are 25 and 35.

(c) What is the midrange of the data?

The midrange (average of the largest and smallest values in the data set) of the data is: (70 + 13)/2 =
41.5
(d) Give the five-number summary of the data.
The five number summary of a distribution consists of the minimum value, first quartile, median value,
third quartile, and maximum value. It provides a good summary of the shape of the distribution and
for this data is: 13, 20, 25, 35, 70.

2. using the data for age given in Exercise 2.4, answer the following.
(a) Use smoothing by bin means to smooth the above data, using a bin depth of 3. Illustrate your
steps. Comment on the effect of this technique for the given data.
(b) How might you determine outliers in the data?.
Answer:

(a) Use smoothing by bin means to smooth the above data, using a bin depth of 3. Illustrate your
steps.Comment on the effect of this technique for the given data.
The following steps are required to smooth the above data using smoothing by bin means with a bin depth
of 3.
Step 1: Sort the data. (This step is not required here as the data are already sorted.)
Step 2: Partition the data into equal-frequency bins of size 3.
Bin 1: 13, 15, 16 Bin 2: 16, 19, 20 Bin 3: 20, 21, 22
Bin 4: 22, 25, 25 Bin 5: 25, 25, 30 Bin 6: 33, 33, 35
Bin 7: 35, 35, 35 Bin 8: 36, 40, 45 Bin 9: 46, 52, 70
Step 3: Calculate the arithmetic mean of each bin.
Step 4: Replace each of the values in each bin by the arithmetic mean calculated for the bin.
Bin 1: 142/3, 142/3, 142/3 Bin 2: 181/3, 181/3, 181/3 Bin 3: 21, 21, 21
Bin 4: 24, 24, 24 Bin 5: 262/3, 262/3, 262/3 Bin 6: 332/3, 332/3, 332/3
Bin 7: 35, 35, 35 Bin 8: 401/3, 401/3, 401/3 Bin 9: 56, 56, 56

(b) How might you determine outliers in the data?

Outliers in the data may be detected by clustering, where similar values are organized into groups, or
clusters. Values that fall outside of the set of clusters may be considered outliers. Alternatively, a
combination of computer and human inspection can be used where a predetermined data distribution
is implemented to allow the computer to identify possible outliers. These possible outliers can then be
verified by human inspection with much less effort than would be required to verify the entire initial
data set.

3. Design a data warehouse for a regional weather bureau. The weather bureau has about 1,000 probes,
which are scattered throughout various land and ocean locations in the region to collect basic weather
Data,including air pressure, temperature, and precipitation at each hour. All data are sent to the central

station, which has collected such data for over 10 years. Your design should facilitate efficient querying
and on-line analytical processing, and derive general weather patterns in multidimensional space.
Answer:
Since the weather bureau has about 1,000 probes scattered throughout various land and ocean locations,
We need to construct a spatial data warehouse so that a user can view weather patterns on a map by
month, by region, and by different combinations of temperature and precipitation, and can dynamically
drill down or roll up along any dimension to explore desired patterns.
The star schema of this weather spatial data warehouse can be constructed as shown in Figure 3.4.

4.
TID items bought
T100 {M, O, N, K, E, Y}

T200 {D, O, N, K, E, Y }
T300 {M, A, K, E}
T400 {M, U, C, K, Y}
T500 {C, O, O, K, I ,E}

(a) Find all frequent itemsets using Apriori and FP-growth, respectively. Compare the efficiency of
the two mining processes.
(b) List all of the strong association rules (with support s and confidence c) matching the following
metarule, where X is a variable representing customers, and itemi denotes variables representing
items (e.g., A, B, etc.):
x transaction, buys(X, item1) buys(X, item2) buys(X, item3) [s, c]
(a) Find all frequent itemsets using Apriori and FP-growth, respectively. Compare the efficiency of
the two mining processes.
Apriori:
C1 =
m3
o3
n2
k5
e4
y3
d1
a1
u1
c2
i1
L1 =
m3
o3

k5
e4
y3
C2 =
mo 1
mk 3
me 2
my 2
ok 3
oe 3
oy 2
ke 4
ky 3
ey 2
L2 =
mk 3
ok 3
oe 3
ke 4
ky 3
C3= oke 3
key 2
L3= oke 3
Efficiency comparison: Apriori has to do multiple scans of the database while FP-growth builds the
FP-Tree with a single scan. Candidate generation in Apriori is expensive (owing to the self-join), while
FP-growth does not generate any candidates.

(b) List all of the strong association rules (with support s and confidence c) matching the following

metarule, where X is a variable representing customers, and itemi denotes variables representing
items (e.g., A, B, etc.):
x transaction, buys(X, item1) buys(X, item2) buys(X, item3) [s, c]
k,o e [0.6,1]
e,o k [0.6,1]