Data Mining is Essential to Healthcare

Data Mining has become very popular in the healthcare industry.This is primarily because many healthcare transactions are too complex to be processed by traditional methods and data mining can make these transactions less complex and voluminous. Data mining has been used to detect fraud and abuse and also to manage customer relationships and healthcare. A disadvantage to data accessibility is that since data mining exist in many different forms such as clinics, administration and laboratories data have to be collected way before data mining can be done. Data warehousing can be a soulution to this, but it has its flaws as well. Overall, data mining can be very useful now or even in the near future in the healthcare industry.

Source: http://www.cmio.net/index.php?option=com_articles&view=article&id=31762:jhim-data-mining-beneficial-essential-to-healthcare

How Organizations Decide to Use Data Mining

How to Do Data Mining in the Perfect Manner

An organization's usage of data mining can have a challenging start. The "right" or "wrong" use of data mining tools and practices can greatly impact revenues and costs. This article is saying that data mining use should be determined by taking into account business needs, data, and performance.

If a business is in a high growth stage, it will need to look at potential customers and their preferences. Software that organizes prospect information would be a good choice to help the company. It can also sort the potential customers into groups based on characteristics such as age, location, and personal interests. If a company already has the data it requires to be profitable, data mining may not be necessary. If a company is experiencing declines in sales, data mining can be used to determine solutions for how to retain customers. To conclude, organizations make decisions on how to use data mining based on needs, performance, and availability of data.

Data mining gone wrong... well tampered with anyway

Source:http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/2011/04/when-data-mining-goes-horribly-wrong.html

This article shows one of the fatal flaws with data mining if the processes for the computer to follow have been too widely defined or just told to collect and combine what data it relevant but not checking for relevancy. In this article Google made a mistake in the programming they used to mine for data in a social site called West Seattle Blog. The program started to combine information about different places and comments about these places because for the similarity of the names. This lead to conflicting comments like,"the Chinese food is great," and ," the PI moron strikes again," which are comment about two different places but posted on a bowling alleys comment page. Also the Seattle PI which is a local newspaper which has a link on the Google supported blog has been rerouted to display a page about a west Seattle killer responsible for slayings in Seattle having mental problems instead of the homepage of the newspaper. Google has to get on this problem and rectify the issues in their programming or it could get ugly. 

Companies' Use of Blog Posts

Realities of Social Media Data Mining

People who post entries on social networking sites are often unaware of how this information may be used by companies. Oftentimes, users of social networking sites feel the need to broadcast everything that happens to them. Some users feel safer by having a private profile. Despite having a "private profile", companies can still show advertisements on users' Facebook pages. This is quite an improvement from companies asking customers to fill out surveys on paper or giving surveys on the phone. Even with a private profile, a user will still "like" companies' Facebook pages and leave comments on these pages. The reason for this is by posting information to public pages, it gives the companies the right to use your information. Once companies receive information from users, they may use this information to increase revenues.

Target Targeting Pregnant Women

Target has specific ways of tracking when a women is likely pregnant. They data mine information. Target looks at specific transactions that if purchased together can indicate that a women is pregnant. If Target assumes that a women is pregnant coupons will be sent to the customers house at an expense and habit forming period of her life according to the article. Target even exposed a girls pregnancy. This was done once at Target when coupons were sent out to a man's house about baby clothes, cribs, etc. The customer arrived at Target store angry and upset because he says Target sent his daughter coupons about baby items and that is encouraging her to get pregnant. The manager was completely unaware of what was going on, but the mailer was addressed to the customers daughter, but the manager apologized on more than one occasion. Later on the man called Target back and apologized because he was unaware that his daughter was pregnant and this happened about a month ago. The primary question to ask is was Target doing an ethical act by data mining this certain customer purchasing information?

Source: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-02-16/strategy/31065696_1_pregnant-woman-coupons-target

Data Mining Is Finally Seen In A Good Way

Many bad things has been said about data mining and the biggest one is privacy. Many are concerned that data mining invades the privacy of individuals and by doing this certain people can access individuals personal information such as a bank account statement. According to the article data mining might be seen in a good way because it will pry loose consumer information and organize it in a way that helps individuals make smarter money decisions. Along with this information banks will be able to understand the needs of their customers better and individuals will be able to make smart money decisions. The exposure of certain personal information can increase the financial education effort. An example of data mining can be seen in a good light happened in California where three utilities disclosed detailed energy consumption records and many could download this to view their consumption. One customer downloaded her data and discovered that her daughter was taking long showers and the showers required lots of water.The utility bill decreased once her daughter stopped taking long showers. Since data is already made available by the government there is a huge problem with getting banks to go along with this. Banks are concerned with identity theft and hackers being exposed to consumers information, so why go along with this on-going debate?

Source: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/03/06/privacy-heres-how-data-mining-might-actually-help-consumers/



Department of defense and data mining

Source:http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2011/04/05/dod-considers-illegal-data-mining-part-of-capital-crime/

 This blog post suggest that data mining might be able to allow the department of defense to prove intent on various crimes committed by Bradley Manning. It mentions a post to Wikipedia by Bradley Manning leaking what the government considers critical documents. This post included a quote from another article,"  Accused WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning installed and used unauthorized “data-mining software” on his SIPRnet workstation during the time he allegedly siphoned hundreds of thousands of documents off that classified network, the Army said Friday in response to inquiries from Threat Level.

Manning’s use of unauthorized software was the basis of two allegations filed against him this year in his pending court martial, but the charge sheet listing those allegations was silent on the nature of that software.

On Friday, an Army spokeswoman clarified the charges. “The allegations … refer to data-mining software,” spokeswoman Shaunteh Kelly wrote in an e-mail. “Identifying at this point the specific software program used may potentially compromise the ongoing criminal investigation.”

[snip]

If Manning installed data-mining software on his SIPRnet workstation, that could potentially strengthen the government’s case against the alleged leaker.,"

 The agency is still creating its case for this matter, anyway this was an interesting way data mining was used though since it was illegal so it's kinda a downer.

Private Records Being Used to Make Profits

Hospitals are being criticized for patient data mining.

There have been concerns about hospitals using data mining to determine which patients are most likely to pay their bills on time. This information is uncovered by observing and analyzing private information such as health records. Critics say that mining for the best customers selects privileged patients and denying less privileged people of the right to healthcare. Hospital employees claim that it helps determine the most effective drugs to use and surgeries to perform, and improve the services provided to patients. The purpose of looking through private records to find the best customers is to make higher revenues through customer relationship management.

Data Deception

In 2007 Sears attempted to start its own data mining project and sent out a proposal to its customers asking them to be part of a group to better understand their buying habits and ipso facto better service them. What the customers didn't know was how deep Sears was really delving into their personal lives and computers. Information like bank loans and medical superscription's where buried inside the contract and most of the people who signed up with this service didn't even read the contract just said yes received a measly 10 dollars compensation for joining and unknowingly let sears see all their laundry, dirty or clean. Sears was ordered by the FTC to end this project and destroy all data collected for this project and to cease and desist. This project seemed to be the start of a even faster growing trend of data gathering from retailers to social media everyone who is one the internet is susceptible to data mining. This article warns about letting yourself go too far in your posting of private or sensitive material on the internet. No matter how secure you think it is once its on the internet its out there forever. 

Source  :http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2059237,00.html

Data Mining: Terrifying Terrorists

Source: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2zn4z6q4#page-2

The article I am posting is about the use of data mining to track suspicious behavior in people that may or may not be part of terrorist plot and organizations. Dataveillence is a term used to describe this type of data mining procedure, it involves taking and collecting data from various travel services, sites, and other government sources and compiling it into a large database. From this database then an algorithm is applied and usable data is then shown as output. This data is used to find inconsistencies that may point out terrorists and plot before it happens.

Process of Data Mining

• Exploration is the first stage in the process of data mining. You will want to explore and prepare data, or clean the data you have. If you have a large number of variables to consider, you may need to reduce them to a range that is easy to deal with.
• The second stage of the data mining process is called pattern identification. What this stage consists of is looking for patterns and choose one that will allow you to make the best predictions. One of the best ways to find the best predictive patterns to a given situation is to find which one performs at the highest level.
• The third stage of data mining is deployment but you cannot move to this stage until you have found a pattern from stage 2 that was highly predictive

Reasons Companies Use Data Mining Techniques

Have you ever thought that a company knows more about your buying habits than you do? This is due to the use of data mining, which includes finding out buying habits by looking at patterns among information such by analyzing what customers have done in the past, and using the data extracted to produce charts, models, and graphs. For example, a shoe company may show advertisements on Google based on shoes you have searched for or purchased online.

Digging Up Dollars
This article shows that information about customers can benefit companies in several ways.

•  First, it helps companies gain customers. This is accomplished by sorting through a database of customers and their attributes or characteristics. Selected potential customers with certain attributes then became the company's target market.

•  Second, the use of data mining software can reduce expenses. Some data mining applications can detect people who are likely to commit a fraud. Companies can incur a lot of expenses detecting a fraud, and these applications can reduce fraud, which in turn reduces expenses.

•  Third, it can make a company more profitable. Data mining software can be used to figure out which promotions will be the most helpful based on customer information. For example, telemarketing may be less effective than advertising on Google if customers are likely to screen their calls.         

Oracle. The Greek gods of data prediction

Oracle is a company that provides specialized software designed to create layouts to see patterns in data accumulated by companies like HP, Dell, and IBM. These companies use oracle to trace customers usage and even see patterns in competitors selling trends to try and penetrate other markets. According to Oracle," Oracle Data Mining (ODM) provides powerful data mining functionality as native SQL functions within the Oracle Database." SQL is a programming language that Oracle is based in. Oracle provides a diagram of how data is mined, processed, and then rendered to the user for analysis.

   

Oracle in the time of the Greek empire were witches that shared a single eye which they used to see the future of any person or event associated with a single or multiple people. In this day in age the witches are Oracle and the systems used for finding patterns in data is like the eye of the future for these companies.   

Does Target Have YOU in It's Aim??

As the years progress and technology advances, people are generating more and more data through their everyday actions of surfing the web, socializing on Facebook and Twitter, and shopping online and on-site at their favorite clothing stores and/or supermarkets.  The data that's created is collected, stored, and analyzed to find relationships to help businesses essentially make better business decisions.  This is the gist of data mining.  

One decision in which businesses use data mining techniques is the decision of which products should be marketed/advertised to a certain demographic of customer.  A good example would be Target's method of marketing baby products to their customers.  Target, along with almost every other business today, records EVERY piece of data that customers generate; everything from the type of product purchased to how the product was purchased (be it with debit, credit, cash, check, online, on-site, during the day, at night,... the list goes on and on).  Once all of this raw data is analyzed, Target is able to make pretty accurate predictions of what customers want and need, create very informative profiles for each of the customers, and very effectively market certain products to customers, tailoring those products to very specific times in the customers' lives.  Target practices this marketing technique to increase customer loyalty by creating an image that Target has "everything for every occasion."

Pretty good way to use data, right?  Yeah, that's what I thought as well.  

As good of a way to use data as it may seem, there is a lot of controversy surrounding Target's marketing practices.  There are claims that Target is being too intrusive into the personal lives of customers and are invading their privacy! 

Forbes released an article that supports these claims with the title of "How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did."  The article simply summarized Target's marketing technique of analyzing their customers' buying habits to make predictive profiles of their customers for more effective marketing.  The article also explains how Target accurately profiled one of their customers, a teenage girl, as pregnant based on her buying habits in comparison to other customer's buying habits. 

Some feel that her privacy was invaded due to the fact that the teenage girl never disclosed her pregnancy to anyone affiliated with Target, yet still got targeted promotional advertisements for baby and pregnancy products mailed to her home.

I personally feel that the girl's privacy was not invaded, due to the fact that although she may not have come right out and said that she was pregnant, clearly her buying patterns did!  After all, why would her receiving coupons for baby products be a bad thing if indeed she is pregnant?  I mean, isn't that what marketing is all about, finding out what the customer needs/wants and giving it to them?  I definitely think that Target is just ahead of the curve with putting all of their raw data to good use.

What do you think?