data mining

Data mining parameters include:

• Association - looking for patterns where one event is connected to another event
• Sequence or path analysis - looking for patterns where one event leads to another later event
• Classification - looking for new patterns (May result in a change in the way the data is organized but that's ok)
• Clustering - finding and visually documenting groups of facts not previously known
• Forecasting - discovering patterns in data that can lead to reasonable predictions about the future (This area of data mining is known as predictive analytics.)

Data mining techniques are used in a many research areas, including mathematics, cybernetics, and genetics. Web mining, a type of data mining used in customer relationship management (CRM), takes advantage of the huge amount of information gathered by a Web site to look for patterns in user behavior. A data miner is a program that collects such information, often without the user's knowledge, as spyware.

Read more about data mining: - SearchCRM.com has a Data Quality Learning Guide.

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RELATED GLOSSARY TERMS Terms from Whatis.com − the technology online dictionary data aggregation  (SearchSQLServer.com) data preprocessing  (SearchSQLServer.com)