what is data mining
what are the issues with data mining

Hello and thank you for your question.

I have reviewed a large volume of materials that cover data mining and
its issues--here are the best of them.  Rather than reproduce the
selected material in full, I have copied a short excerpt; butyou will
learn more by reading each entire article:

Data Mining: What is Data Mining?
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/datamining.htm
"Generally, data mining (sometimes called data or knowledge discovery)
is the process of analyzing data from different perspectives and
summarizing it into useful information - information that can be used
to increase revenue, cuts costs, or both. Data mining software is one
of a number of analytical tools for analyzing data. It allows users to
analyze data from many different dimensions or angles, categorize it,
and summarize the relationships identified."

Data Mining: Issues
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/issues.htm
  "One of the key issues raised by data mining technology ... is the
issue of individual privacy. Data mining makes it possible to analyze
routine business transactions and glean a significant amount of
information about individuals buying habits and preferences.
  Another issue is that of data integrity. Clearly, data analysis can
only be as good as the data that is being analyzed....
  A hotly debated technical issue is whether it is better to set up a
relational database structure or a multidimensional one....
Finally, there is the issue of cost...."

Data Mining: More Information
http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/teacher/technologies/palace/sources.htm
--Lots of links to other material at this site--

Data Mining Systems
http://www.megaputer.com/dm/systems.php3
This article discusses each of the following, with examples:
  Subject-oriented analytical systems 
  Statistical packages 
  Neural Networks
  Evolutionary Programming
  Memory Based Reasoning (MBR)
  Decision Trees
  Genetic Algorithms
  Nonlinear Regression Methods

What is Data Mining? 
http://www.ikdi.net/data-mining.html
"Data mining is not an automatic process. Data mining does not simply
happen by pushing a button. Data mining requires an understanding of
the client's intentions and objectives, the nature of the application
and the scope as well as the limitations of data mining methods.
Hence, data mining is research. A process that requires to develop
knowledge about every task at hand, to research possibilities and
options, to apply the best data mining methods and to communicate the
results in a comprehensible form."

Albion Research: What Is Data Mining? 
http://www.albionresearch.com/data_mining/what.htm
"Most data mining techniques fall into one of two related categories:
model building, and clustering."

University of California at Santa Barbara
http://vision.ece.ucsb.edu/~jelena/research/Mining/term.html
"Nowadays, capabilities for storing data are far larger that the
capabilities for data analysis and understanding (data warehousing).
The idea of discovering “knowledge” in such large datasets (or mine
data) may be significantly challenging. Generally speaking, knowledge
discovery or data mining in databases is a nontrivial extraction of
previously unknown and potentially useful information from data
(Frawley, 1992). Data mining is essentially the computer-assisted
process of information analysis (Fayyad 1996). The data mining process
seeks to build a better understanding and characterization of data
useful for further analysis. Data Mining techniques unifies existing
methods from machine learning, pattern recognition, databases,
statistics, data visualization, etc."

And finally, a Dilbert Cartoon
http://www2.rowan.edu/mars/depts/math/lacke/dilbert.html

Search terms used:
"What is data mining"
Dilbert "data mining"

Thank you again for your question.  I've given you lots to read about
this subject.  After you've gone through it, if you want more
material, please let me know via a request for clarification.  I would
appreciate it if you would hold off on rating my answer until I have
an opportunity to respond.

Sincerely,
Google Answers Researcher
Richard-ga

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Request for Answer Clarification by but-ga on 14 Mar 2003 09:05 PST

hi Richard -ga thank you for your effort in finding the information.
what I whated to know is that are these the main issues of data mining
regards to database systems. Have you come across other examples from
which data mining can be illstrate to make things clear for me.

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Clarification of Answer by richard-ga on 14 Mar 2003 14:40 PST

Hello again:

I would say there are two main issues involved in data mining of
database systems.

One is the technical issues of data mining (that is, doing it
efficiently and in a way that derives useful information).

The other is security/privacy (that is, doing it in a morally and
legally acceptable way so that the confidentiality and secrecy of the
individual data items is not compromised).

The sources I've provided in my answer give you what you need in both
these areas, but since my answer is more technical than
security/privacy minded, I'll give you some more on the latter issue:

Privacy Preserving Mining of Association Rules
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers/cs/26438/http:zSzzSzwww.almaden.ibm.comzSzcszSzpeoplezSzsrikantzSzpaperszSzkdd02.pdf/evfimievski02privacy.pdf

Maintaining Data Privacy in Association Rule Mining 
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers/cs/26589/http:zSzzSzwww.cs.ust.hkzSzvldb2002zSzVLDB2002-paperszSzS19P03.pdf/rizvi02maintaining.pdf

If you need more on this subject, take a look at
CiteSeer data mining and privacy 
http://tinyurl.com/7hvz

Good luck in your project!
Sincerely,
Richard-ga

That was quick!