Data Mining For Dummies E-Book

Meta S. Brown

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 476

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Delve into your data for the key to success Data mining is quickly becoming integral to creating value and business momentum. The ability to detect unseen patterns hidden in the numbers exhaustively generated by day-to-day operations allows savvy decision-makers to exploit every tool at their disposal in the pursuit of better business. By creating models and testing whether patterns hold up, it is possible to discover new intelligence that could change your business's entire paradigm for a more successful outcome. Data Mining for Dummies shows you why it doesn't take a data scientist to gain this advantage, and empowers average business people to start shaping a process relevant to their business's needs. In this book, you'll learn the hows and whys of mining to the depths of your data, and how to make the case for heavier investment into data mining capabilities. The book explains the details of the knowledge discovery process including: * Model creation, validity testing, and interpretation * Effective communication of findings * Available tools, both paid and open-source * Data selection, transformation, and evaluation Data Mining for Dummies takes you step-by-step through a real-world data-mining project using open-source tools that allow you to get immediate hands-on experience working with large amounts of data. You'll gain the confidence you need to start making data mining practices a routine part of your successful business. If you're serious about doing everything you can to push your company to the top, Data Mining for Dummies is your ticket to effective data mining.

Leseprobe

Data Mining For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Media and software compilation copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014935519

ISBN 978-1-118-89317-3 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-89316-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-89319-7 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Data Mining For Dummies

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/datamining to view this book's cheat sheet.

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Foolish Assumptions

Icons Used in This Book

Beyond the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Getting Started with Data Mining

Chapter 1: Catching the Data-Mining Train

Getting Real about Data Mining

Not your professor’s statistics

The value of data mining

Working for it

Doing What Data Miners Do

Focusing on the business

Understanding how data miners spend their time

Getting to know the data-mining process

Making models

Understanding mathematical models

Putting information into action

Discovering Tools and Methods

Visual programming

Working quick and dirty

Testing, testing, and testing some more

Chapter 2: A Day in Your Life as a Data Miner

Starting Your Day Off Right

Meeting the team

Exploring with aim

Structuring time with the right process

Understanding Your Business Goals

Understanding Your Data

Describing data

Exploring data

Cleaning data

Preparing Your Data

Taking first steps with the property data

Preparing the ownership change indicator

Merging the datasets

Deriving new variables

Modeling Your Data

Using balanced data

Splitting data

Building a model

Evaluating Your Results

Examining the decision tree

Using a diagnostic chart

Assessing the status of the model

Putting Your Results into Action

Chapter 3: Teaming Up to Reach Your Goals

Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be a Data Miner

You can be a data miner

Using the knowledge you have

Data Miners Play Nicely with Others

Cooperation is a necessity

Oh, the people you’ll meet!

Working with Executives

Greetings and elicitations

Lining up your priorities

Talking data mining with executives

Part II: Exploring Data-Mining Mantras and Methods

Chapter 4: Learning the Laws of Data Mining

1st Law: Business Goals

2nd Law: Business Knowledge

3rd Law: Data Preparation

4th Law: Right Model

5th Law: Pattern

6th Law: Amplification

7th Law: Prediction

8th Law: Value

9th Law: Change

Chapter 5: Embracing the Data-Mining Process

Whose Standard Is It, Anyway?

Approaching the process in phases

Cycling through phases and projects

Documenting your work

Business Understanding

Data Understanding

Data Preparation

Modeling

Evaluation

Deployment

Chapter 6: Planning for Data-Mining Success

Setting the Course with Formal Business Cases

Satisfying the boss

Minimizing your own risk

Building Business Cases

Elements of the business case

Putting it in writing

The basics on benefits

Avoiding the Failure Option

Chapter 7: Gearing Up with the Right Software

Putting Data-Mining Tools in Perspective

Avoiding software risks

Focusing on business goals, not tools

Determining what you need

Comparing tools

Shopping for software

Evaluating Software

Don’t fall in love (with your software)

Engaging with sales representatives

The sales professional’s mantra — BANT

Part III: Gathering the Raw Materials

Chapter 8: Digging into Your Data

Focusing on a Problem

Managing Scope

Using Your Organization’s Own Data

Appreciating your own data

Handling data with respect

Chapter 9: Making New Data

Fathoming Loyalty Programs

Grasping the loyalty concept

Your data bonanza

Putting loyalty data to work

Testing, Testing . . .

Experimenting in direct marketing

Spying test opportunities

Testing online

Microtargeting to Win Elections

Treating voters as individuals

Looking at an example

Enhancing voter data

Gaining an information advantage

Developing your own test data

Taking discoveries on the campaign trail

Surveying the Public Landscape

Eliciting information with surveys

Using surveys

Developing questions

Conducting surveys

Recognizing limitations

Bringing in help

Getting into the Field

Going where no data miner has gone before

Doing more than asking

One Challenge, Many Approaches

Chapter 10: Ferreting Out Public Data Sources

Looking Over the Lay of the Land

Exploring Public Data Sources

United States federal government

Governments around the world

United States state and local governments

Chapter 11: Buying Data

Peeking at Consumer Data

Beyond Consumer Data

Desperately Seeking Sources

Assessing Quality and Suitability

Part IV: A Data Miner’s Survival Kit

Chapter 12: Getting Familiar with Your Data

Organizing Data for Mining

Getting Data from There to Here

Text files

Databases

Spreadsheets, XML, and specialty data formats

Surveying Your Data

Chapter 13: Dealing in Graphic Detail

Starting Simple

Eyeballing variables with bar charts and histograms

Relating one variable to another with scatterplots

Building on Basics

Making scatterplots say more

Interacting with scatterplots

Working Fast with Graphs Galore

Extending Your Graphics Range

Chapter 14: Showing Your Data Who’s Boss

Rearranging Data

Controlling variable order

Formatting data properly

Labeling data

Controlling case order

Getting rows and columns right

Putting data where you need it

Sifting Out the Data You Need

Narrowing the fields

Selecting relevant cases

Sampling

Getting the Data Together

Merging

Appending

Making New Data from Old Data

Deriving new variables

Aggregation

Saving Time

Chapter 15: Your Exciting Career in Modeling

Grasping Modeling Concepts

Cultivating Decision Trees