Introduction
Before explaining what data mining is and what data mining tools are, let us first understand what data is.
Whichever industry you are currently associated with or no matter what your interests are, the buzzword that all we all have heard of is “data.” Indeed, “data” is changing how we live, work and function. Data may be a part of a study helping that is helping to cure a specific disease, improve an organization’s revenue, or be responsible for the targeted advertisements that we all have seen. It is data that is everywhere and anywhere. This article explains what data mining is and the top data mining tools.
What is Data Mining?
Data mining can be described as a process used to extract meaningful and usable data from an enormous set of raw data. Data mining means analyzing data patterns in huge batches of data using software or more. The process comprises a range of approaches and methods to analyze huge data sets to gain business insights.
The process of data mining starts as soon as data is collated in data warehouses, and the process covers everything from data cleansing to generating meaningful insights from the data. Data mining can also be termed KDD, which means Knowledge Discovery in Data.
Following are the main stages of the data mining process:
- Anomaly recognition
- Dependency modeling
- Clustering
- Classification
- Regression
- Report generation
Top Data Mining Tools You Should Know
Data scientists various techniques and data mining tools for different data mining tasks, such as cleansing, structuring, organizing, analyzing, and envisaging data. Following is a list of the top data mining tools (paid and unpaid)that one should know about.
- Apache Mahout
The Apache Ma is one of the best open-source tools for data mining available in the market. Apache Foundation has developed this tool, and this data mining software mainly focuses on the collective filtering, clustering, and arrangement of data. This tool has been written in the JAVA programming language. Apache Mahout integrates useful JAVA libraries that enable data professionals to execute various mathematical operations, including linear algebra and statistics.
- Dundas BI
Dundas BI is a comprehensive data mining tool that enables rapid integrations and generates quick insights. The advanced data mining software uses relational data mining methods, and this tool gives more importance to generating well-defined data structures that make data processing, analysis, and reporting easy.
- Teradata
Teradata is also termed as Teradata Database. This data mining tool has excellent ratings and includes a data warehouse for seamless data mining and data management. The specialty of this data mining tool is that it can easily differentiate between “hot” and “cold” data, which is particularly used to gain insights on data related to product positioning, customer preferences, and sales which are crucial to any business.
- SAS Data Mining
The SAS Data Mining Tool is an application that has been designed and developed by the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) Institute. SAS is used for high-level data mining, data management, and analysis. This tool is great for optimization and text mining. SAS has a broad range of users, and the advantage of this data mining software tool is that it can manage and mine data efficiently. Another advantage of this tool is that it can perform statistical analysis to offer accurate insights that enable timely and informed decision-making.
- SPSS Modeler
SPSS Inc. originally owned the SPSS Modeler software suite; however, this suite was later acquired by the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Thus, the SPSS software is an IBM data mining software tool that enables users to use data mining algorithms to create predictive models without programming. SPSS Modeler is presently available in two flavors: the IBM SPSS Modeler Premium and the IBM SPSS Modeler Professional, integrating added text and entity analytics features.
Conclusion
Being data-driven is no longer just an option but a mandate that needs to be met. A business’ success is based on how quickly you can discover meaningful insights from data and include these insights into business processes and decisions. This blog has listed the best data mining tools you should know of as a data scientist.
