BISS workshop, June 12, 2005

Data Mining Tools for Business Applications

Leaders: Shirley Mills and Ted Norminton, Carleton University

This workshop will discussed a variety of topics including data visualization, association rules and market basket analysis, clustering and segmentation methods including selforganizing maps, classification methods including neural nets and decision trees, model selection, predictive modelling, churn modelling and model ensembles such as bagging and boosting. Application of these topics in market research, finance and insurance, and telecommunications will be emphasized. The focus will be on data mining to understand business, identify patterns, catch fraudulent activities, make better use of resources, and improve quality of service.

The morning session will provide an overview of the field of data mining and begin with data visualization, data squashing, and clustering of multidimensional data. The afternoon session will expand the analysis into classification and predictive modelling.

The Workshop will focus on concepts and application rather than on mathematical rigour and as such the material will be accessible to a wide audience. Some experience with regression methods and/or numerical analysis techniques would be helpful. Extensive use will be made of free software (R and Ggobi), downloadable from the Web.

Workshop participants will receive a complete set of notes, together with programs written in R. A CD containing software, programs, datasets, papers of interest, and additional notes will also be available.

About the Leaders

Shirley Mills received her B.Sc. (Double Hons.), M.Sc., and Cert. Ed. (Secondary) from the University of Manitoba and her Ph.D. in 1983 in Statistics and Applied Probability from the University of Alberta. She taught for 12 years at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Alberta before joining Carleton University in 1983. She is currently Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Carleton. From 1987-1994 she served as founding Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at Carleton.

Edward J. (Ted) Norminton obtained his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Western Ontario and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Toronto. He joined Carleton University in 1965, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics. He specializes in applied mathematics with particular emphasis on computer-intensive methods.

Mills and Norminton each have over twenty years of experience applying statistical and mathematical tools to solve problems in business and industry. Based in the National Capital Region, they have worked with several government departments, high technology and telecommunication firms, and researchers in the fields of health care, finance, security, business, and marketing. They teach a graduate level data mining course to students at Carleton University and conduct workshops for non-academic groups in companies and government organizations. Mills and Norminton have over ten years of personal experience applying these tools and have several graduates now working in data mining positions.