Does Data Mining Mean Statistics or More Than Statistics?
Actually, data mining is a term synonymous with ‘data dredging’ or ‘data fishing’ and has been used to describe the process of trawling through data in the hope of identifying patterns. The data, which are not simply uniform, have differences that can be interpreted as patterns. The trouble is that many of these ‘patterns’ will simply be a product of random fluctuations, and will not represent any underlying structure. To statisticians, then, the term ‘Data Mining’ conveys the sense of naive hope vainly struggling against the cold realties of chance. To other researchers, however, the term is seen in a much more positive light. Superficially, of course, what we are describing here is nothing but exploratory data analysis, an activity that has been carried out since data were first analyzed and which achieved greater respectability. But there is a difference, and it is this difference that explains why statisticians have been slow to latch on to the opportunities. This difference is the
