Data mining

Data mining is a term from computer science. Sometimes it is also called knowledge discovery in databases (KDD). Data mining is about finding new information in a lot of data.^[1] The information obtained from data mining is hopefully both new and useful.

In many cases, data are stored so they can be used later. The data are saved with a goal. For example, a store wants to save what has been bought. They want to do this to know how much they should buy themselves, to have enough to sell later. Saving this information, makes a lot of data. The data are usually saved in a database. The reason data are saved is called the first use.

Later, the same data can also be used to get other information that was not needed for the first use. The store might want to know now what kind of things people buy together when they buy at the store. (Many people who buy pasta also buy mushrooms for example.) That kind of information is in the data, and is useful, but was not the reason the data were saved. This information is new and can be useful. It is a second use for the same data.

Finding new information that can also be useful from data is called data mining.

1. ↑ "What is Data Mining? | Data Basecamp". 2022-04-06. Retrieved 2022-06-20.