How Does Data Mining Differ from Other Analysis Methods?
Data mining differs from other methods of analysis in several ways. A significant distinction between data mining and other analytical applications is in the approach they use in exploring the data. Many available analytical tools support a verification-based approach in which the user hypothesizes about the specific data relationships and then uses the tools to verify or refute those presumptions. This verification-based process stems from the intuition of the user to pose the questions and refine the analysis based on the results of potentially complex queries against a database. The effectiveness of this analysis depends on several factors, not the least of which are the ability of the user to pose appropriate questions, the capability of the tools to return results quickly, and the overall reliability and accuracy of the data being analyzed. Other available analytical tools have been optimized to address some of these issues. Query and reporting tools, such as those used in data wa
