Module 1

2 marks
1. What do you mean by a transactional database?
Transactional database in data mining refers to a database system that records individual
transactions, such as purchases or reservations, and is commonly used to analyze patterns and
relationships in large volumes of data.
2. What is a concept hierarchy? Give an example.
Concept hierarchy in data mining refers to a hierarchical organization of related concepts or
categories, with each level of the hierarchy representing a different level of abstraction or
generalization. For example, in a hierarchy of animal species, the top level may be "Animals," the
second level may be "Mammals," the third level may be "Carnivores" and so on, with each
subsequent level representing a more specific category.
3. What is background knowledge? Give an example.
Background knowledge refers to information that is known about the data or domain being
analyzed and can be used to inform the mining process or interpret the results. For example, in
analyzing customer purchasing patterns, background knowledge about seasonal trends or
marketing campaigns could be used to help identify relevant patterns in the data.
4. What do you mean by data mining?
Data mining is the process of discovering patterns, relationships, and insights from large volumes
of data, using statistical and machine learning techniques to identify hidden patterns or knowledge.

5. What do you mean by interestingness?

Interestingness refers to the degree to which a discovered pattern or relationship is novel, valid,
useful, and understandable to the domain expert.
6. List two methods for dimensionality reduction.
● Principal Component Analysis (PCA): A statistical method that identifies the most
important variables in a dataset and reduces the number of dimensions by projecting the
data onto a new coordinate system based on the principal components.
● t-SNE (t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding): A nonlinear dimensionality
reduction technique that is particularly useful for visualizing high-dimensional datasets by
preserving the local structure of the data while also revealing global patterns and
relationships.
7. What is a multimedia database?
Multimedia database is a database that stores multimedia data such as images, audio, and video,
and allows efficient retrieval of this data.
8. Name different methods by which a classification model can be represented.
A classification model can be represented using various methods such as decision trees, rule-
based systems, neural networks, support vector machines (SVM), and k-nearest neighbor (k-NN)
algorithms.
 9. What is numerosity reduction?
Numerosity reduction is a process of reducing the number of data instances or objects in a
dataset while preserving the important characteristics and relationships between the data
points, often used for reducing the computational complexity of data mining algorithms.
10. What is an operational database?
An operational database management system is software that is designed to allow users to easily
define, modify, retrieve, and manage data in real-time. While conventional databases rely on batch
processing, operational database systems are oriented toward real-time, transactional operations.

5 Marks

11. Explain data discretization and concept hierarchy generation.

Data discretization is a method of converting a huge number of data values into smaller ones so that
the evaluation and management of data become easy. In other words, data discretization is a method of
converting attributes values of continuous data into a finite set of intervals with minimum data loss. It is
the process of converting continuous numerical data into categorical data by partitioning the range
of values into intervals, or bins, and assigning each value to the corresponding interval. This
technique is used to simplify data analysis and reduce the number of variables in a dataset.

 Discretization techniques can be categorized based on whether it uses class information or

not such as follows:
o Supervised Discretization - This discretization process uses class information.

o Unsupervised Discretization - This discretization process does not use class

information.
o Eg: Suppose we have an attribute of Age with the
 given values
Table before Discretization

Some Famous techniques of data discretization

• Histogram analysis
• Binning
• Cluster Analysis
• Data discretization using decision tree analysis
 • Data discretization using correlation analysis
Concept hierarchy generation, on the other hand, is the process of organizing categorical data
into a hierarchical structure of concepts or categories based on their relationships, such as
generalization or specialization. This technique is used to create a meaningful and organized
representation of categorical data for analysis and decision-making.

For example, using the location hierarchy, the user can retrieve data which summarizes sales for
each location, for all the areas in a given state, or even a given country without the necessity of
reorganizing the data.

• Schema Hierarchy − Schema hierarchy represents the total or partial order between
attributes in the database. It can define existing semantic relationships between attributes.
The schema hierarchy of a relation for address containing the attributes street city, state
and country

Houseno<street<city<state<country

• Set-Grouping Hierarchy − A set-grouping hierarchy constructs values for a given

attribute or dimension into groups or constant range values.

• Set grouping hierarchy for age

• {young, middle aged, senior} all(age0

• {20,…29} C young

• {40,…59} C middleaged

• {60,…89} C senior

All ages

Young middle aged senior

{20,21,…29} {40,41,…59} {60,61,…89}

 • Operation-Derived Hierarchy − Operation-derived hierarchy is represented by a set of
operations on the data. These operations are defined by users, professionals, or the data
mining system. These hierarchies are usually represented for mathematical attributes. Such
operations can be as easy as range value comparison, as difficult as a data clustering and
data distribution analysis algorithm.

• Rule-based Hierarchy − In a rule-based hierarchy either a whole concept hierarchy or an

allocation of it is represented by a set of rules and is computed dynamically based on the
current information and rule definition

12. Differentiate classification and prediction.

Classification and prediction are two fundamental tasks in data mining that involve building
models to predict the class or value of a target variable based on a set of input variables. The main
difference between classification and prediction is the type of target variable.
In classification, the target variable is a categorical variable, and the goal is to predict the class or
category of the target variable based on the input variables. Examples of classification include
predicting whether a customer will churn or not, or whether a tumor is malignant or benign.
In prediction, the target variable is a continuous numerical variable, and the goal is to predict the
value of the target variable based on the input variables. Examples of prediction include predicting
the price of a house or the revenue of a business.

Prediction Classification

Prediction is about predicting a Classification is about determining a

missing/unknown element(continuous value) (categorial) class (or label) for an element in a
of a dataset dataset

Eg. We can think of prediction as predicting Eg. Whereas the grouping of patients based on
the correct treatment for a particular disease their medical records can be considered
for an individual person. classification.

The model used to predict the unknown value The model used to classify the unknown value
is called a predictor. is called a classifier.

The predictor is constructed from a training A classifier is also constructed from a training
set and its accuracy refers to how well it can set composed of the records of databases and
estimate the value of new data. their corresponding class names

13. Explain the concept of data integration.

Data Integration is a data preprocessing technique that combines data from multiple
heterogeneous data sources into a coherent data store and provides a unified view of the
data. These sources may include multiple data cubes, databases, or flat files.
The data mining system is integrated with a database or data warehouse system so that it
can do its tasks in an effective presence. A data mining system operates in an environment
 that needed it to communicate with other data systems like a database system. There are
the possible integration schemes that can integrate these systems which are as follows −
No coupling − No coupling defines that a data mining system will not use any function of
a database or data warehouse system. It can retrieve data from a specific source (including
a file system), process data using some data mining algorithms, and therefore save the
mining results in a different file.
Such a system, though simple, deteriorates from various limitations. First, a Database
system offers a big deal of flexibility and adaptability at storing, organizing, accessing,
and processing data. Without using a Database/Data warehouse system, a Data mining
system can allocate a large amount of time finding, collecting, cleaning, and changing
data.
Loose Coupling − In this data mining system uses some services of a database or data
warehouse system. The data is fetched from a data repository handled by these systems.
Data mining approaches are used to process the data and then the processed data is saved
either in a file or in a designated area in a database or data warehouse. Loose coupling is
better than no coupling as it can fetch some area of data stored in databases by using query
processing or various system facilities.
Semitight Coupling − In this adequate execution of a few essential data mining primitives
can be supported in the database/datawarehouse system. These primitives can contain
sorting, indexing, aggregation, histogram analysis, multi-way join, and pre-computation of
some important statistical measures, including sum, count, max, min, standard deviation,
etc.
Tight coupling − Tight coupling defines that a data mining system is smoothly integrated
into the database/data warehouse system. The data mining subsystem is considered as one
functional element of an information system.
Data mining queries and functions are developed and established on mining query
analysis, data structures, indexing schemes, and query processing methods of
database/data warehouse systems. It is hugely desirable because it supports the effective
implementation of data mining functions, high system performance, and an integrated data
processing environment.

Issues in Data integration:

1. Schema integration and object matching: How can the data analyst or the computer be sure that
customer id in one database and customer number in another reference to the same attribute.
2. Redundancy: An attribute (such as annual revenue, forinstance) may be redundant if it can be
derived from another attribute or set ofattributes. Inconsistencies in attribute or dimension naming
can also cause redundanciesin the resulting data set.
 3. detection and resolution of datavalue conflicts: For the same real-world entity, attribute values
fromdifferent sources may differ.

14. Explain the knowledge discovery in database? Challenges?

The knowledge becomes effective in the sense that we may make changes to the system and
measure the impacts. The accomplishment of this step decides the effectiveness of the whole KDD
process. There are numerous challenges in this step, such as losing the "laboratory conditions"
under which we have worked. For example, the knowledge was discovered from a certain static
depiction, it is usually a set of data, but now the data becomes dynamic. Data structures may
change certain quantities that become unavailable, and the data domain might be modified, such as
an attribute that may have a value that was not expected previously.

15. BinningMethod:
This method works on sorted data in order to smooth it. The whole data is divided into
segments of equal size and then various methods are performed to complete the task. Each
segmented is handled separately. One can replace all data in a segment by its mean or
boundary values can be used to complete the task.

Binning Methods for Data Smoothing

• The binning method can be used for smoothing the data.

• Mostly data is full of noise. Data smoothing is a data pre-processing technique using a
different kind of algorithm to remove the noise from the data set. This allows important
patterns to stand out.

Unsorted data for price in dollars

Before sorting: 8 16, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 30, 26, 27, 30, 34

First of all, sort the data

After Sorting: 8, 9, 15, 16, 21, 21, 24, 26, 27, 30, 30, 34

Smoothing the data by equal frequency bins

Bin 1: 8, 9, 15, 16

Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 26,

Bin 3: 27, 30, 30, 34

Smoothing by bin means

For Bin 1:

(8+ 9 + 15 +16 / 4) = 12 (4 indicating the total values like 8, 9 , 15, 16)

Bin 1 = 12, 12, 12, 12

 For Bin 2:

(21 + 21 + 24 + 26 / 4) = 23

Bin 2 = 23, 23, 23, 23

For Bin 3:

(27 + 30 + 30 + 34 / 4) = 30

Bin 3 = 30, 30, 30, 30

How to smooth data by bin boundaries?

You need to pick the minimum and maximum value. Put the minimum on the left side and
maximum on the right [Link], what will happen to the middle values?

Middle values in bin boundaries move to its closest neighbor value with less distance.
Unsorted data for price in dollars:

Before sorting: 8 16, 9, 15, 21, 21, 24, 30, 26, 27, 30, 34

First of all, sort the data

After sorting: 8, 9, 15, 16, 21, 21, 24, 26, 27, 30, 30, 34

 Smoothing the data by equal frequency bins

Bin 1: 8, 9, 15, 16

Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 26,

Bin 3: 27, 30, 30, 34

• Smooth data after bin Boundary

Before bin Boundary: Bin 1: 8, 9, 15, 16

Here, 1 is the minimum value and 16 is the maximum value.9 is near to 8, so 9 will be treated
as 8. 15 is more near to 16 and farther away from 8. So, 15 will be treated as 16.

After bin Boundary: Bin 1: 8, 8, 16, 16

Before bin Boundary: Bin 2: 21, 21, 24, 26,

After bin Boundary: Bin 2: 21, 21, 26, 26,

Before bin Boundary: Bin 3: 27, 30, 30, 34

After bin Boundary: Bin 3: 27, 27, 27, 34

16. Data mining task primitives are the basic building blocks of the data mining process, which
define the type of patterns that can be mined from a dataset. There are several data mining task
primitives that are widely used in the field of data mining. Some of the important task primitives
are:
1. The set of task-relevant data to be mined: This refers to the portion of the database that
the user is interested in. It could include specific attributes, dimensions of interest in a data
warehouse, or any other relevant data that the user wants to extract insights from.
2. The kind of knowledge to be mined: This refers to the specific function or analysis that
the user wants to perform. For example, the user may want to perform classification,
clustering, or association analysis on the data.
3. The background knowledge to be used in the discovery process: This refers to any prior
knowledge that the user has about the data, which can be used to improve the accuracy and
relevance of the data mining results. For example, the user may have information about
certain relationships or dependencies in the data, which can be used to guide the mining
process.

• The interestingness measures and thresholds for pattern evaluation: This refers to the
criteria that are used to determine the usefulness or significance of the patterns discovered
during the data mining process. For example, the user may set a threshold for the minimum
support level or confidence level of association rules that are considered interesting. Rules
whose support and confidence values are below user-specified thresholds are considered
uninteresting.

• Simplicity: A factor contributing to the interestingness of a pattern is the pattern's overall

simplicity for human comprehension. For example, the more complex the structure of a
rule is, the more difficult it is to interpret, and hence, the less interesting it is likely to be.
Objective measures of pattern simplicity can be viewed as functions of the pattern
structure, defined in terms of the pattern size in bits or the number of attributes or operators
appearing in the pattern.

• Certainty (Confidence): Each discovered pattern should have a measure of certainty

associated with it that assesses the validity or "trustworthiness" of the pattern. A certainty
measure for association rules of the form "A =>B" where A and B are sets of items is
confidence. Confidence is a certainty measure. Given a set of task-relevant data tuples, the
confidence of "A => B" is defined as Confidence (A=>B) = # tuples containing both A and
B /# tuples containing A

• Utility (Support): The potential usefulness of a pattern is a factor defining its

interestingness. It can be estimated by a utility function, such as support. The support of an
association pattern refers to the percentage of task-relevant data tuples (or transactions) for
which the pattern is true.
Utility (support): usefulness of a pattern
Support (A=>B) = # tuples containing both A and B / total #of tuples

4. Novelty: Novel patterns are those that contribute new information or increased
performance to the given pattern set. For example -> A data exception. Another strategy
for detecting novelty is to remove redundant patterns
 5. The expected representation for visualizing the discovered patterns: This refers to the
form in which the user wants to visualize the patterns that are discovered. This could
include various forms such as tables, graphs, charts, decision trees, or cubes. The
visualization is an important aspect of the data mining process as it can help the user to
better understand and interpret the results.

By using these data mining task primitives, different types of patterns can be identified in the data.
These patterns can help in making informed decisions and improving the overall efficiency of the
process.

17. Data Mining - Issues

Data mining is not an easy task, as the algorithms used can get very complex and data is not
always available at one place. It needs to be integrated from various heterogeneous data sources.
These factors also create some issues. Here in this tutorial, we will discuss the major issues
regarding −

• Mining Methodology and User Interaction

• Performance Issues

• Diverse Data Types Issues

Mining Methodology and User Interaction Issues

It refers to the following kinds of issues −

 • Mining different kinds of knowledge in databases − Different users may be interested in
different kinds of knowledge. Therefore it is necessary for data mining to cover a 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 the 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
levels 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, and visual representations. These
representations should be easily understandable.

• Handling noisy or incomplete data − The data cleaning methods are required to handle
the noise and incomplete objects while mining the data regularities. If the data cleaning
methods are not there then the accuracy of the discovered patterns will be poor.

• Pattern evaluation − The patterns discovered should be interesting because either they
represent common knowledge or lack novelty.

Performance Issues

There can be performance-related issues such as follows −

• 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
algorithms divide the data into partitions which is further processed in a parallel fashion.
Then the results from the partitions is merged. The incremental algorithms, update
databases without mining 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 the knowledge from them
adds challenges to data mining.

18. Data preprocessing is a crucial step in the data mining process. It involves transforming
raw data into a clean and structured format that can be analyzed to extract meaningful
insights. There are several reasons why data preprocessing is necessary before data mining:

● Data quality improvement: Raw data may contain errors, inconsistencies, missing values,
outliers, and noise that can affect the accuracy of the analysis. Data preprocessing helps to
identify and correct these issues, resulting in improved data quality.
● Data cleaning
o Data cleaning is defined as removal of noisy and irrelevant data from collection.
o Cleaning in case of Missing values.
o Cleaning noisy data, where noise is a random or variance error.
o Cleaning with Data discrepancy detection and Data transformation tools

● Data integration: Data may be stored in different formats, sources, and structures. Data
preprocessing helps to integrate data from different sources into a common format, making
it easier to analyze. Data integration using Data Migration tools, Data Synchronization
tools and ETL(Extract-Load-Transformation) process.
● Data Selection
Data selection is defined as the process where data relevant to the analysis is decided and
retrieved from the data collection. For this we can use Neural network, Decision Trees,
Naive bayes, Clustering, and Regression methods.
● Data reduction: Raw data may contain a large number of attributes, some of which may
be irrelevant or redundant for analysis. Data preprocessing helps to reduce the
dimensionality of data by selecting relevant attributes, resulting in faster and more accurate
analysis.
● Data normalization: Raw data may be expressed in different units and scales. Data
preprocessing helps to normalize data by scaling it to a common range, making it easier to
compare and analyze.
● Data transformation: Raw data may not be suitable for analysis using certain algorithms
or models. Data preprocessing helps to transform data into a suitable format for analysis.
Data Transformation is a two step process:
Data Mapping: Assigning elements from source base to destination to capture
transformations.
Code generation: Creation of the actual transformation program.
● Data Mining
Data mining is defined as techniques that are applied to extract patterns potentially
useful. It transforms task relevant data into patterns, and decides purpose of model
using classification or characterization.
● PatternEvaluation
Pattern Evaluation is defined as identifying strictly increasing patterns representing
knowledge based on given measures. It find interestingness score of each pattern, and
uses summarization and Visualization to make data understandable by user.
 ● Knowledge Representation
This involves presenting the results in a way that is meaningful and can be used to make
decisions.
Overall, data preprocessing is essential for accurate and efficient data mining. It helps to improve
data quality, reduce noise, integrate data from different sources, reduce dimensionality, normalize
data, and transform data into a suitable format for analysis.

19. Data Mining Architecture

The significant components of data mining systems are a data source, data mining engine, data
warehouse server, the pattern evaluation module, graphical user interface, and knowledge base.

Data Source:
The actual source of data is the Database, data warehouse, World Wide Web (WWW), text files,
and other documents. You need a huge amount of historical data for data mining to be
successful. Organizations typically store data in databases or data warehouses. Data warehouses
may comprise one or more databases, text files spreadsheets, or other repositories of data.
Sometimes, even plain text files or spreadsheets may contain information. Another primary
source of data is the World Wide Web or the internet.
Different processes:
Before passing the data to the database or data warehouse server, the data must be cleaned,
integrated, and selected. As the information comes from various sources and in different formats,
it can't be used directly for the data mining procedure because the data may not be complete and
accurate. So, the first data requires to be cleaned and unified. More information than needed will
be collected from various data sources, and only the data of interest will have to be selected and
passed to the server. These procedures are not as easy as we think. Several methods may be
performed on the data as part of selection, integration, and cleaning.
Database or Data Warehouse Server:
The database or data warehouse server consists of the original data that is ready to be processed.
Hence, the server is cause for retrieving the relevant data that is based on data mining as per user
request.
Data Mining Engine:
The data mining engine is a major component of any data mining system. It contains several
modules for operating data mining tasks, including association, characterization, classification,
clustering, prediction, time-series analysis, etc.
In other words, we can say data mining is the root of our data mining architecture. It comprises
instruments and software used to obtain insights and knowledge from data collected from various
data sources and stored within the data warehouse.
Pattern Evaluation Module:
The Pattern evaluation module is primarily responsible for the measure of investigation of the
pattern by using a threshold value. It collaborates with the data mining engine to focus the search
on exciting patterns.
This segment commonly employs stake measures that cooperate with the data mining modules to
focus the search towards fascinating patterns. It might utilize a stake threshold to filter out
discovered patterns. On the other hand, the pattern evaluation module might be coordinated with
the mining module, depending on the implementation of the data mining techniques used. For
efficient data mining, it is abnormally suggested to push the evaluation of pattern stake as much
as possible into the mining procedure to confine the search to only fascinating patterns.
Graphical User Interface:
The graphical user interface (GUI) module communicates between the data mining system and
the user. This module helps the user to easily and efficiently use the system without knowing the
complexity of the process. This module cooperates with the data mining system when the user
specifies a query or a task and displays the results.
Knowledge Base:
The knowledge base is helpful in the entire process of data mining. It might be helpful to guide
the search or evaluate the stake of the result patterns. The knowledge base may even contain user
views and data from user experiences that might be helpful in the data mining process. The data
mining engine may receive inputs from the knowledge base to make the result more accurate and
reliable. The pattern assessment module regularly interacts with the knowledge base to get
inputs, and also update it.