Data Mining Explained

Overview

Data mining is the crucial process of extracting implicit and possibly useful information from data. It uses analytical and visualization techniques to explore and present information in a format which is easily understandable by humans.

Data mining is widely used in a variety of profiling practices, such as fraud detection, marketing research, surveys and scientific discovery.

In this article I will briefly explain some of the fundamentals and its applications in the real world.

Herein I will not discuss related processes of any sorts, including Data Extraction and Data Structuring.

The Effort

Data Mining has found its application in various fields such as financial institutions, health-care & bio-informatics, business intelligence, social networks data research and many more.

Businesses use it to understand consumer behavior, analyze buying patterns of clients and expand its marketing efforts. Banks and financial institutions use it to detect credit card frauds by recognizing the patterns involved in fake transactions.

The Knack

There is definitely a knack to Data Mining, as there is with any other field of web research activities. That is why it is referred as a craft rather than a science. A craft is the skilled practicing of an occupation.

One point I would like to make here is that data mining solutions offers an analytical perspective into the performance of a company depending on the historical data but one need to consider unknown external events and deceitful activities. On the flip side it is more critical especially for Regulatory bodies to forecast such activities in advance and take necessary measures to prevent such events in future.

In Closing

There are many important niches of Web Data Research that this article has not covered. But I hope that this article will provide you a stage to drill down further into this subject, if you want to do so!

Should you have any queries, please feel free to mail me. I would be pleased to answer each of your queries in detail.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Explained&id=4341782

Achieving Sustainability in Mining

There's so much that our planet gives us for our consumption. These things come in different shapes and sizes, and some of the most abundant of them are minerals. Minerals are essential for living in these modern times, and when it comes to extracting them, mining is still the primary method used.

One of the biggest issues that any industry faces is sustainability, and the mining sector is certainly no exception to it. Some of the things that serve to constrain sustainability in this industry are the ever-increasing demand minerals, the consumption of resources that are needed to extract and process metals, as well as the pollution caused by the process of extracting them.

Increasing Demand for Minerals

There's no question that there's growth in the extraction of construction minerals. As more and more countries become more industrialized, the demand for such minerals is almost directly proportional to the growth in the construction industry. In the 20th century, we saw a growth in the extraction of construction materials. Demand for ores and industrial minerals also increased.

Impacts

Aside from the obvious impact mining has on the environment, it can also have a negative social impact. In order to keep up with the demand for mined resources, there's also a subsequent increase in mining activities to meet such demand. During the course of conducting such activities, there can be times when certain things are overlooked, including the short, medium and even long-term effects of mining activities in the community where they are done. This is then where there arises a need to balance the economic benefits of mining versus its potential harmful effects on the environment.

Sustainability and Maximizing Mining Benefits

There are ways to maximize the benefits we can get from mining as we improve sustainability both on the environmental and social fronts. This was specifically addressed in the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development. It identified three priority areas:

a. Support efforts to address the environmental, economic, health and social impacts and benefits of mining, minerals and metals throughout their life cycle;

b. Enhance the participation of stakeholders, including local and indigenous communities and women, to play an active role in minerals, metals and mining development throughout the life cycles of mining operations; and

c. Foster sustainable mining practices through the provision of financial, technical and capacity-building support to developing countries and countries with economies in transition for the mining and processing of minerals.

As long as efforts are made for mining to be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable, we can enjoy the many benefits of mining without worrying about and suffering the potentially harmful effects mining can have on people and nature.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Achieving-Sustainability-in-Mining&id=8108499

Data Extraction Services - A Helpful Hand For Large Organization

The data extraction is the way to extract and to structure data from not structured and semi-structured electronic documents, as found on the web and in various data warehouses. Data extraction is extremely useful for the huge organizations which deal with considerable amounts of data, daily, which must be transformed into significant information and be stored for the use this later on.

Your company with tons of data but it is difficult to control and convert the data into useful information. Without right information at the right time and based on half of accurate information, decision makers with a company waste time by making wrong strategic decisions. In high competing world of businesses, the essential statistics such as information customer, the operational figures of the competitor and the sales figures inter-members play a big role in the manufacture of the strategic decisions. It can help you to take strategic business decisions that can shape your business' goals..

Outsourcing companies provide custom made services to the client's requirements. A few of the areas where it can be used to generate better sales leads, extract and harvest product pricing data, capture financial data, acquire real estate data, conduct market research , survey and analysis, conduct product research and analysis and duplicate an online database..

The different types of Data Extraction Services:

•    Database Extraction:

•    Reorganized data from multiple databases such as statistics about competitor's products, pricing and latest offers and customer opinion and reviews can be extracted and stored as per the requirement of company.

•    Web Data Extraction:

•    Web Data Extraction is also known as data Extraction which is usually referred to the practice of extract or reading text data from a targeted website.

Businesses have now realized about the huge benefits they can get by outsourcing their services. Then outsourcing is profitable option for business. Since all projects are custom based to suit the exact needs of the customer, huge savings in terms of time, money and infrastructure are among the many advantages that outsourcing brings.

Advantages of Outsourcing Data Extraction Services:

•    Improved technology scalability
•    Skilled and qualified technical staff who are proficient in English
•    Advanced infrastructure resources
•    Quick turnaround time
•    Cost-effective prices
•    Secure Network systems to ensure data safety
•    Increased market coverage

By outsourcing, you can definitely increase your competitive advantages. Outsourcing of services helps businesses to manage their data effectively, which in turn would enable them to experience an increase in profits.

Outsourcing Web Research offer complete Data Extraction Services and Solutions to quickly collective data and information from multiple Internet sources for your Business needs in a cost efficient manner.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction-Services---A-Helpful-Hand-For-Large-Organization&id=2477589

Data Mining in the 21st Century: Business Intelligence Solutions Extract and Visualize

When you think of the term data mining, what comes to mind? If an image of a mine shaft and miners digging for diamonds or gold comes to mind, you're on the right track. Data mining involves digging for gems or nuggets of information buried deep within data. While the miners of yesteryear used manual labor, modern data minors use business intelligence solutions to extract and make sense of data.

As businesses have become more complex and more reliant on data, the sheer volume of data has exploded. The term "big data" is used to describe the massive amounts of data enterprises must dig through in order to find those golden nuggets. For example, imagine a large retailer with numerous sales promotions, inventory, point of sale systems, and a gift registry. Each of these systems contains useful data that could be mined to make smarter decisions. However, these systems may not be interlinked, making it more difficult to glean any meaningful insights.

Data warehouses are used to extract information from various legacy systems, transform the data into a common format, and load it into a data warehouse. This process is known as ETL (Extract, Transform, and Load). Once the information is standardized and merged, it becomes possible to work with that data.

Originally, all of this behind-the-scenes consolidation took place at predetermined intervals such as once a day, once a week, or even once a month. Intervals were often needed because the databases needed to be offline during these processes. A business running 24/7 simply couldn't afford the down time required to keep the data warehouse stocked with the freshest data. Depending on how often this process took place, the data could be old and no longer relevant. While this may have been fine in the 1980s or 1990s, it's not sufficient in today's fast-paced, interconnected world.

Real-time EFL has since been developed, allowing for continuous, non-invasive data warehousing. While most business intelligence solutions today are capable of mining, extracting, transforming, and loading data continuously without service disruptions, that's not the end of the story. In fact, data mining is just the beginning.

After mining data, what are you going to do with it? You need some form of enterprise reporting in order to make sense of the massive amounts of data coming in. In the past, enterprise reporting required extensive expertise to set up and maintain. Users were typically given a selection of pre-designed reports detailing various data points or functions. While some reports may have had some customization built in, such as user-defined date ranges, customization was limited. If a user needed a special report, it required getting someone from the IT department skilled in reporting to create or modify a report based on the user's needs. This could take weeks - and it often never happened due to the hassles and politics involved.

Fortunately, modern business intelligence solutions have taken enterprise reporting down to the user level. Intuitive controls and dashboards make creating a custom report a simple matter of drag and drop while data visualization tools make the data easy to comprehend. Best of all, these tools can be used on demand, allowing for true, real-time ad hoc enterprise reporting.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-in-the-21st-Century:-Business-Intelligence-Solutions-Extract-and-Visualize&id=7504537

Online Retail - Mining for Gold

Online retailers live in an ever-changing environment, and the ability to stay competitive is the difference between doing well and doing nothing. In today's fast paced internet market place, if you aren't using web scraping, you are missing a key component to growing your business.

Data Mining

Data mining your competition's prices and services and making sure your prices and services are similar, or even lower, is what makes the difference. Why should your customer choose you if they can get the same product somewhere else for less? What data you collect and how often you update it is also another key ingredient to success.

Extract Website Data

Web scraping allows you to gather information from your competition and use it improve your position in the market. When you extract website data from your competitor's website, it allows you to conduct business from a position that doesn't involve guess work. The internet is an environment that is constantly being updated and changed. It is vital that you have the ability to have up-to-date information on what others in your market are doing. If you can't do this, you really can't compete.

Application of Information

When you know what your competitors are doing all the time, you can keep your business a little more competitive than they are. When you have information such as monthly and even weekly price variations in the market and what products and services are being offered, you can apply that information to your own pricing matrix and ensure a competitive edge in your market.

An Army of One

Web scraping gives you the ability to see what is going on in the market at all times. You can monitor just about anything you choose with a web scraping service. Many online retailers are very small operations and they don't have the resources to constantly monitor each competitor's website - so engaging a web scraping service is like having your own marketing and research team working for you night and day to keep tabs on them. You choose what it is you want to know, and your research team goes to work. Simple.

Staying Ahead of Trends

Having the ability to recognize trends is the key to any business, especially on the internet were information is so fluid. The business that can identify a trend quickly and take advantage of it will always stay one step ahead. That's why big corporations have teams dedicated to researching market trends and predictions. If you can see where something is going, you can always get ahead of it. That's what web scraping can help you do - identify those trends in your market so you can get in ahead of the pack.

A Helping Hand

Sometimes running your own online retail business can be a daunting and lonely ordeal. Even those that have a great deal of experience with the internet can feel lost at times. A web scraping service is a tool you can use to help yourself in such times. Web scraping is automated and precise, and it gives you the ability to have vital information delivered to you in a manner you can understand and use. It's one less thing to worry about - and the information you get from data mining is what every business owner actually should worry about - what the competition is doing? With a web scraping service, you can concern yourself with other things - like making more profits.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Retail---Mining-for-Gold&id=6531024

Commercial Kitchen Ventilation and Extraction - What You Need to Know

There are a number of things to consider when installing commercial kitchen ventilation and there are several different types of systems available - but all must comply with the "Standard for kitchen ventilation systems DW172". A commercial kitchen cannot operate effectively without a properly designed and functioning ventilation system. Getting the design of the correct system for YOUR premises can be complex. All systems are operation and site specific - how you move the air, where you move it to and what you have to do with it to ensure compliance not only with the relevant legislation, but also any local building and environmental constraints.

The factors that may need to be addressed include not only physically moving the air, but heat, humidity, smoke, fire, grease and odour. There are various filter and safety systems available that deal with any or all of these issues and the best system for you will depend on your site, its surroundings and your budget. You may also have to deal with noise from the fan(s) and any planning issues relating to external ducting.

In basic terms a ventilation system comprises a canopy over the production area with a fan linked by ducting to a filter bank within the kitchen extraction canopy which draws the air out to the external exhaust point. The fan is sized in direct relation to the amount of air that has to be moved, where it has to be moved to (the exhaust point) and how quickly (depending on the type of food being cooked).

In addition, mechanical provision must be made to replace 85% of the air that is being extracted. This is called "Make up Air", the other 15% is made up by natural means - general kitchen areas and windows etc.

Within the design, careful consideration must also be given to ensure adequate access for cleaning of the duct and servicing of the fans.

If the production equipment is gas, in accordance with British Standard (BS6173) you will have to fit a Gas Interlock system. This system automatically shuts off the gas supply to the cooking equipment in the event of a failure in the ventilation system.

You may also want to consider the installation of a Heat Recovery unit which reclaims the heat (and some of the fuel cost) from your kitchen that would normally be blasted straight out through from your extracton canopy.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Commercial-Kitchen-Ventilation-and-Extraction---What-You-Need-to-Know&id=6438003

Websites Can Contractually Restrict Third Party Scraping of Their Data

E-commerce service providers can contractually prevent other websites from copying factual information from their website for commercial use, such as for price comparison purposes.

On 15 January 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed in a preliminary ruling that websites not protected by a database right, are free to impose contractual restrictions on the use of their data. Interestingly, the CJEU acknowledged that the contractual restrictions could – if national law permits - be imposed through the website’s terms and conditions.

Let’s have a quick look at how this matter arose. Since the early days of online reservations, some websites discovered that they could attract a lot of visitors by comparing the online prices displayed by e-commerce websites selling competing goods and services. Originally such third party websites were called “content aggregators” and today one particular type, so-called “price comparison” websites, is widely-known.  To be able to aggregate such content and create added-value for the consumer, these websites use automated software that visits the e-commerce websites and copies the latter’s pricing information in real time. This practice is often referred to as “screen scraping” and frequently occurs in the online travel reservation business. Some of these third party websites do not only show the compared prices of airline tickets but act as an intermediary for booking travel packages, including car and hotel rental services on top of the airline ticket, often after adding a commission.

In response, low-cost airlines quickly started taking legal action against such screen scraping practices, fearing the loss of such additional, revenue-generating services to these third party websites and also through suffering reputational damage when consumers were not properly informed about issues such as flight changes and cancellations. In these circumstances there was one case between the low-cost airline, Ryanair, and the third party website owner, PR Aviation BV, in which the Dutch Supreme Court made a preliminary ruling request to the CJEU.

The CJEU, in its preliminary ruling on the scope of database protection and contractual freedom, ruled in Ryanair’s favour. It concluded that, in the absence of any database related copyright or sui generis protection on Ryanair’s website, Ryanair was expressly allowed to lay down contractual limitations on the use of its website by third parties. Ryanair would not have had such contractual freedom if its database enjoyed copyright or sui generis database protection (due to the restriction laid down in Article 15 of the Database Directive 96/9/EC). Ryanair’s terms and conditions, to which users had to visibly agree when searching for flights (but without needing to explicitly tick a box), indeed stated that the use of any automated system or software to extract data from its website for commercial purposes was prohibited. Ryanair even went as far as to explicitly state that other websites could not sell its flights and that price comparison websites had to enter into a written licence agreement with Ryanair,
to access Ryanair’s price, flight and timetable information for the sole purpose of price comparison.

As a consequence of the CJEU’s ruling, any website making available mere factual information not protected by any legal right, can still prevent others from using such information through its terms and conditions. Clearly, that website will have to demonstrate under applicable (national) law that the website visitor is contractually bound, in particular because it validly agreed to such terms and conditions. Depending on the applicable law, such agreement by the consumer could be considered as having taken place by ticking a box or merely after having been made aware of the website’s terms and conditions.

The CJEU’s ruling is likely to impact upon the business model of a number of content aggregating/price comparison websites. The ruling’s concrete relevance, however, will have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Source:http://www.timelex.eu/en/blog/detail/websites-can-contractually-restrict-third-party-scraping-of-their-data