How Data Mining Works

How Data Mining Works

How exactly is data mining able to tell you important things that you didn't know or what is going to happen next? The technique that is used to perform these feats in data mining is called modeling. Modeling is simply the act of building a model in one situation where you know the answer and then applying it to another situation that you don't. For instance, if you were looking for a sunken Spanish galleon on the high seas the first thing you might do is to research the times when Spanish treasure had been found by others in the past. You might note that these ships often tend to be found off the coast of Bermuda and that there are certain characteristics to the ocean currents, and certain routes that have likely been taken by the ship’s captains in that era. You note these similarities and build a model that includes the characteristics that are common to the locations of these sunken treasures. With these models in hand you sail off looking for treasure where your model indicates it most likely might be given a similar situation in the past. Hopefully, if you've got a good model, you find your treasure.
This act of model building is thus something that people have been doing for a long time, certainly before the advent of computers or data mining technology. What happens on computers, however, is not much different than the way people build models. Computers are loaded up with lots of information about a variety of situations where an answer is known and then the data mining software on the computer must run through that data and distill the characteristics of the data that should go into the model. Once the model is built it can then be used in similar situations where you don't know the answer. For example, say that you are the director of marketing for a telecommunications company and you'd like to acquire some new long distance phone customers. You could just randomly go out and mail coupons to the general population - just as you could randomly sail the seas looking for sunken treasure. In neither case would you achieve the results you desired and of course you have the opportunity to do much better than random - you could use your business experience stored in your database to build a model.

The goal in prospecting is to make some calculated guesses about the information in the lower right hand quadrant based on the model that we build going from Customer General Information to Customer Proprietary Information. For instance, a simple model for a telecommunications company might be:
98% of my customers who make more than $60,000/year spend more than $80/month on long distance
This model could then be applied to the prospect data to try to tell something about the proprietary information that this telecommunications company does not currently have access to. With this model in hand new customers can be selectively targeted.
Test marketing is an excellent source of data for this kind of modeling. Mining the results of a test market representing a broad but relatively small sample of prospects can provide a foundation for identifying good prospects in the overall market. Table 3 shows another common scenario for building models: predict what is going to happen in the future.

If someone told you that he had a model that could predict customer usage how would you know if he really had a good model? The first thing you might try would be to ask him to apply his model to your customer base - where you already knew the answer. With data mining, the best way to accomplish this is by setting aside some of your data in a vault to isolate it from the mining process. Once the mining is complete, the results can be tested against the data held in the vault to confirm the model’s validity. If the model works, its observations should hold for the vaulted data.

Post Purchase Consumer Behaviour

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Post Purchase Consumer Behaviour / Post Purchase Dissonance / Cognitive dissonance

PROMOTION MIX / MARKETING COMMUNICATION MIX

Promotion Mix

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PROMOTION MIX / MARKETING COMMUNICATION MIX

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Brand Personality - PPT

Brand Personality

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Oh..Crap ...!!

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my INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES after mba - Over Confidence(1/15)

students.....like me, thanks to our obsessions, forget about the touch we need to maintain with the ground while we start flying toward the sky, leading to certain undesirable events...
Even if you are prepared to the extreme for an interview, this lost touch, can actually kill all your dreams, can shatter your image, cause embarrassment. You feel like your insufficiency is made public. Nowhere to hide, cause you are The Public.


Now what actually in laymen terms, this Lost Touch is....??


YES! You guessed it Right, Over-Confidence.. [i know you read the title :-p]


Unlike banana, Overconfidence comes in many flavors [oh.don't confuse urself with banana, just another bad example ;) ]


You are overconfident, when you actually start ignoring the odds, you are covered in the certitude. You start behaving in such a manner, that you see self image in everybody's eyes. You feel (imagine) things, things you would like to happen to you. Call it Attention, u feel everybody is looking at you, discussing about you, Fear You. Fear, You know, or to explain this in the right words would be, that, you want to see fear in your competitions' eyes. Fear of you getting selected. You become more than happy..! You imagine how things will shape up during the interview. In simpler words, you are not you, you are the one who has designed the interview questions & handed it over to the interviewer....just like that ;) sort of u just think that how good the interview will go...!! 


Damn....the next thing that come is overconfidence getting you knocked out...!!
How this happened...??    well the reason is quite simple.....you become limited by your imagination, you are unable to think beyond your winning streak that you just prepared outside..This situation lead to a mental state characterized by a lack of clear and orderly thought and behavior. you tend to answer the unpredicted questions in a very unusual way, with unusual prodigious explanations.....!!

Clearly, (irrespective of the their beliefs, experiences, or gender) the interviewer will say to you to leave for the day & to wait for the phone call....which factually never comes....!!

 "...before you attempt to beat the odds, be sure you could survive the odds beating you..."

Another reason for over-confident behavior can be your luck, or being in a truly uncompetitive environment (say you are one of the best in your batch, in a way or other). These two reasons are connected to some extent. For example, after being (luckily) selected in your first interview, one start undermining his/her competition's capabilities, leading to rise in confidence level, while on the other hand your competition just had an awesome experience of a rejection, helping him/her to know her weak points & target points. And in the next interview you are same (may not be so lucky), while your competition is more worried, but prepared, might have already considered his/her other negatives, and has prepared a well thought pitch/script to counter. God knows how their worried, tensed faces, painted with Looser(YOU IMAGINE THAT part), are going to ruin your day...No Need to Guess What role Overconfidence will play during off-campus placements...! You are not the Best There dear :)



Conclusion is that, for any interview an overconfident candidate will take into account only their planning, generally ignoring external factors. Hence, unable to foresee future developments. Leading to a greater Risk of Failure

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But the Story doesn't end here. What if I say, overconfidence sometimes leads to a greater good ?
The answer is YES! 

To Know More and How to Tackle/Utilize The Negative Powers of Over-Confidence
Read This Small Part of a Short Story :   Oh..Crap ...!!

Tip: Many a Times Overconfidence works....!! IF not then gives you a good lesson of a lifetime :)

Read Previous Issue :  my INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES after mba - PILOT (0/15)

my INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES after mba

my INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES after mba - PILOT (0/15)

"...it happens...happens a lot, and at times, you...you are just thrown away in the first round......."

I am talking about Interviews......JOB HUNT...... or often categorized by me as most-prized-possession you can have in these terribly unstable business times.... & when every second institution is sending their 60 warriors to compete with you.....maybe more????

& that, well, explains where have i been all those months....YES, i was, like you, in search of MY dream job...!!

So did i get it...?? Well that's a million dollar question.!! Don't worry u'll get to know, soon.

My talk right now and for coming month will be solely on Interviews, and, is restricted to MBA....and i won't be talking about others courses.....'cos 1) its apparent, that the situation is just more or less same everywhere, & 2) well, that's one of the most important thing u'll come to know & will help you get you on top..!!

In This Special Edition i'll be covering all the facets of interviews, that i have had experiences with. I won't be telling and yelling things which many of Us, have already heard and read in various articles, i mean they are just fairly disgusting. Know what???? even those interviewers go through those so called tips & tricks, as they say..!!

"..it's a stinking world out there..."

So guys, i have nothing to say but to interviewers, fasten your seat belt SIRE, these kids are gonna rock your head after I prepare them for the big Huddle - U

my INTERVIEW EXPERIENCES after mba