Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Segmentation algorithms are probably the most widely used algorithms.
Segmentation is the process of creating segments or groups of items
based on the input attributes. Customer segmentation is one of the most
common business applications, where stores and companies segment
their customers based on the various input attributes. One of the most
common uses of segmentation is to perform targeted mailing campaigns
to those customers who are likely to make purchases. This reduces the
mailing cost to all the customers, thereby maximizing the profit for the
company.
Sequence analysis algorithms analyze and group input data based on
a certain sequence of operations. For example, if you want to analyze
the navigation patterns of Internet users (sequence and order of pages
visited by a user on the internet) and group them based on their nav-
igations, sequence analysis algorithms would be used. Based on the se-
quence of pages visited you can identify interests of people and provide
appropriate information to the users as a service or show advertise-
ments relevant to the users' preferences to increase sales of specific
products. For example, if you navigate through pages of baby products
on
http://www.amazon.com
,
subsequent visits to Amazon pages might
result in baby product related advertisements. Similarly, sequence ana-
lysis is also used in genomic science to group a sequence of genes with
similar sequences.
Association data mining algorithms help you to identify association in
the data set. Typically these algorithms are used for performing market-
basket analysis where association between various products purchased
together are analyzed. Based on the analysis, associations between
various products are identified and these help in the cross-selling of
products together to boost sales. One famous data mining example
highlights associations — customers buying diapers also bought beer,
and the purchases occurred on Thursday/Friday. One of the reasons is
that diapers often need replenishing and women request their husbands
or significant others to buy them. Men often buy over the weekend,
and hence these purchases were made together. Based on this asso-
ciation, supermarkets can have diapers and beer stocked adjacently,
which helps boost the sales of beer.
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