Oracle Analytics: Business Intelligence and Analytic Applications - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 58

Wal-Mart also discovered a relationship between bananas and cereal.
Customers who bought cereal also were likely to purchase bananas. The
cereal was often far removed from the fruit aisles. When they placed a
banana display near the cereal, sales of bananas skyrocketed.
Wal-Mart also uses data mining to cluster the information of where its
customers live. Using credit card information, they can determine how far
its customers drove to shop at any given store. This data is utilized in the
selection of locations for new stores.
The six steps of effective data mining are:
1. Business understanding : Understanding the specific business prob-
lem's objectives and goals
2. Data understanding : Initial data collection and familiarization:
involves identification of data quality problems and data subsets
3. Data preparation : Selecting and cleaning final set of data
4. Modeling : Selecting and applying modeling techniques
5. Evaluation : Determining whether result meets business problem's
specifications
6. Deployment : Presenting the data in a meaningful way so an end user
can use it
Distributing of the Finished Product to Appropriate Staff
Information should be presented to the staff members appropriate to that
staff member's level within the organization.
Robert E. Horn, while at Harvard and Columbia Universities,
researched how people deal with large amounts of information. He cre-
ated an approach, which he called information mapping (http://www.
informationmapping.com/en/), that is based on learning theory, human
factors engineering, and cognitive science. Horn's approach is quite simi-
lar to the Meyer and Pincus approach, and is worth discussing in a bit
more detail.
Information mapping is a research-based approach to the analysis,
organization, and visual presentation of information. In the analysis com-
ponent, it is necessary to determine the purpose, audience needs, and
information types. In the organization component, the overall structure
for the information will be created based on the analysis. In the presenta-
tion component, the information is formatted for clarity and accessibility