Data Mining Explained

Overview

Data mining is the crucial process of extracting implicit and possibly useful information from data. It uses analytical and visualization techniques to explore and present information in a format which is easily understandable by humans.

Data mining is widely used in a variety of profiling practices, such as fraud detection, marketing research, surveys and scientific discovery.

In this article I will briefly explain some of the fundamentals and its applications in the real world.

Herein I will not discuss related processes of any sorts, including Data Extraction and Data Structuring.

The Effort

Data Mining has found its application in various fields such as financial institutions, health-care & bio-informatics, business intelligence, social networks data research and many more.

Businesses use it to understand consumer behavior, analyze buying patterns of clients and expand its marketing efforts. Banks and financial institutions use it to detect credit card frauds by recognizing the patterns involved in fake transactions.

The Knack

There is definitely a knack to Data Mining, as there is with any other field of web research activities. That is why it is referred as a craft rather than a science. A craft is the skilled practicing of an occupation.

One point I would like to make here is that data mining solutions offers an analytical perspective into the performance of a company depending on the historical data but one need to consider unknown external events and deceitful activities. On the flip side it is more critical especially for Regulatory bodies to forecast such activities in advance and take necessary measures to prevent such events in future.

In Closing

There are many important niches of Web Data Research that this article has not covered. But I hope that this article will provide you a stage to drill down further into this subject, if you want to do so!

Should you have any queries, please feel free to mail me. I would be pleased to answer each of your queries in detail.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Explained&id=4341782

Know the Different Types of Mining Processes

Mining has become a controversial industry because of its "devastating" effect to the environment and the ecosystem. However, it has contributed so much to civilization that without it, we could never be where we are today in many aspects.

There are two basic methods of mining. These are the surface and the underground mining processes:

1. Surface Mining

This involves the mining of minerals located at or near the surface of the earth. This encompasses at least six processes and these are:

• Strip Mining - this involves the stripping of the earth's surface by heavy machinery. This method is generally targeted at extracting coal or sedimentary rocks that lay near the earth's surface.

• Placer Mining - this involves the extraction of sediments in sand or gravel. It is a simple, old-fashioned way of mining. This method is generally applicable to gold and precious gems that are carried by the flow of water.

• Mountain Top Mining - this is a new method which involves blasting of a mountain top to expose coal deposits that lie underneath the mountain crest.

• Hydraulic Mining - this is an obsolete method that involves jetting the side of a mountain or hill with high pressure water to expose gold and other precious metals.

• Dredging - it involves the removal of rocks, sand and silt underneath a body of water to expose the minerals.

• Open Pit - this is the most common mining method. It involves the removal of the top layers of soil in search for gold or buried treasure. The miner digs deeper and deeper until a large, open-pit is created.

2. Underground Mining

This is the process in which a tunnel is made into the earth to find the mineral ore. The mining operation is usually performed with the use of underground mining equipment. Underground mining is done through the following methods:

• Slope Mining - it involves the creation of slopes into the ground in order to reach the ore or mineral deposit. This process is generally applied in coal mining.

• Hard rock - this method uses dynamite or giant drills to create large, deep tunnels. The miners support the tunnels with pillars to prevent them from collapsing. This is a large-scale mining process and is usually applied in the extraction of large copper, tin, lead, gold or silver deposits.

• Drift mining - this method is applicable only when the target mineral is accessible from the side of a mountain. It involves the creation of a tunnel that's slightly lower than the target mineral. The gravity makes the deposit fall to the tunnel where miners can collect them.

• Shaft method - this involves the creation of a vertical passageway that goes deep down underground where the deposit is located. Because of the depth, miners are brought in and out of the pit with elevators.

• Borehole method - this involves the use of a large drill and high pressure water to eject the target mineral.

These are the basic methods used in the extraction of common minerals. There are more complex systems, but still, they are based on these fundamental processes.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Know-the-Different-Types-of-Mining-Processes&id=7932442

CSR in the Extraction Sector

A study commissioned by the Canadian Mining industry found that Canadian mining companies were involved in 4 times as many mining "incidents" as companies from other countries. The study was intended for internal consumption only but has been leaked to the press recently. The study found that Canadian mining companies were involved in nearly two thirds of the 171 "high profile" environmental and human rights violations it studied occurring between 1999 and 2009. Members of the mining industry pointed out that the occurrences are in proportion to their representation on the global mining scene, indicating that they were no better or worse than companies from other countries.

First some background on the study. The study findings were captured in a report titled "Corporate Social Responsibility & the Canadian International Extractive Sector: A Survey". The report was prepared for the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict (CCSRC). The purpose of the study was to measure the level of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the "extractive" sector. The extractive sector, for those of us untutored in the terminology means exploration, gas, oil, and mining companies. The document leaked to the press was a first draft of the report, not the final draft. I should also mention that there is a bill, C-300, before the Canadian parliament which would make financing for foreign ventures contingent on meeting federally defined CSR standards. The exploration, gas, oil, and mining companies, and the organizations which represent them are very much against this bill. Leaking the negative aspects of this report was fortuitous for those in support of bill C-300 and disastrous for those opposed to it.

One of the observations the report makes is that adoption of formal CSR policies by companies with international interests is "remarkably low", but that those companies which have adopted CSR policies have experienced positive outcomes. The CCSRC contacted 584 companies which they felt met their criteria to participate in the study. Of those, 202 chose to participate. The first survey question was "Do you have a CSR policy or Code of International Business Conduct?" 56 of the 202 companies had documented policies in place. The study broke the 202 companies they surveyed into "junior" and "major" companies. 50% of the companies designated as major had documented CSR policies while only 21% of junior companies had one.

The survey also asked about the positive effects of a CSR policy. 24% of respondents claimed a reduction in conflicts or complications, 62% claimed better community relations (relations with the communities they were doing business in), and 25% reported increased shareholder interest. On the downside, 24% reported increased administration costs and 25% reported increased operating costs. One question they failed to ask was whether the benefits outweighed the costs.

The information I've stated in the preceding 2 paragraphs was gleaned from the final draft of the report. I don't have access to the first draft but apparently it described some of the 171 violations they were addressing in the study. I reported on one such violation in Project Management Tips section of this web site under the title "CSR Problems". The incidents reported on reflect the difficulty faced by companies who conduct business in some international locations. These incidents juxtapose our Canadian values and ethics with those of the countries our exploration, gas, mining, and oil companies do business in. One incident reported on, and attributed to the mining company's lack of CSR by the media, pitted one host community against another with the resulting violence blamed on the Canadian mining company. I'm not suggesting here that these companies have not made mistakes in the past, or that improvements cannot be made in their CSR efforts, I am suggesting that we should have realistic expectations about the effectiveness of a CSR policy to prevent any problems in a foreign venture.

A reasonable expectation in some cases would be that the company have a documented CSR policy which conforms to the standards and ethics of this country (Canada), abides by the laws of the host country, and conforms to the standards and ethics of the host country. The expectation should be tempered with the acknowledgment that the operating environment these companies encounter in host countries can be radically different than that found here. For example, when one community is in conflict with another over whether a mining operation should take place, we tend to look to non-violent forms of dispute resolution where some countries may resort to extreme violence to settle the dispute. Canadian companies frequently hire locals as security guards to protect their property as local authorities cannot perform this duty for one reason or another. It is reasonable to expect the hiring company to do its due diligence in hiring these people to ensure they don't create a threat to the surrounding community. It is not reasonable to expect that there will be no conflicts arising out of these situations. Where it is suspected that a security guard overstepped their authority, or engaged in illegal behaviour, it is reasonable to expect the employer to cooperate with the local authorities in the investigation.

North American companies doing business internationally have long had to deal with conflicts between acceptable corporate behaviour in their own country and acceptable behaviour in the host country. Bribery is the classic example. There are countries where bribery is not only accepted but essential to conducting business. Our laws will convict anyone proved to have offered a bribe but failure to pay the bribe may result in a failure to perform on the part of the North American company. Failure to perform might result in the loss of all or part of the company's investment in the project. Holding a company to this type of double standard can only result in one of 2 outcomes: the company will break the rule against bribery, or the company will cease to do business in that host country.

Since this web site is aimed at the project management community, let's draw some conclusions from the survey and CSR in general that may help project managers. The first conclusion I would draw from all of the above is that the CSR policy that governs your project must describe achievable goals. By this I mean that the goals, objectives, and standards stated in the policy must be within the project's power to achieve, or comply with. The second conclusion is that the right CSR policy carefully implemented can provide a business benefit to the organization. It is the project manager's job to ensure that those benefits are realized.

The goals and objectives of the project must include goals and objectives in support of the CSR policy. Those goals and objectives should be spelled out in the Project Charter and the connection between those goals and objectives and the CSR policy clearly defined. Make sure that the CSR related goals and objectives you set for the project are clearly defined, measurable, and obtainable and then agree with your stakeholders on the conditions that will indicate the goals have been met. Check for CSR policy goals and objectives that might conflict with each other and any of your project's goals and objectives, both CSR related and non-CSR. Goals and objectives you feel might conflict with each other, or with the CSR policy should be resolved by senior management. Start your escalation by drawing the project sponsor's attention to the conflict and ask for their help with resolution.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?CSR-in-the-Extraction-Sector&id=5675024

The Equipment Used in Mining

Bureau of Labor statistics reported that there are five major segments in the mining industry. They are gas and oil extracting, coal mining, non-metal mineral mining, metal ore mining and the supporting activities. In this matter, each segment might need different equipment. But, there are some types of mining equipment that are used by all segments of the mining industry.

Excavators

Excavators are types of equipment that are used by the miners to break and remove soil today. Traditionally, they used steam shovels and shovels to do the jobs. An excavator is a vehicle that moves with standard wheels or moves on tracks. There is a rotating platform and a bucket to its end for digging the soil.

Draglines

Draglines are very big earth moving machines that are used in mining industry. These machines are used to expose the underlying mineral deposits. These are also used to drag away the dirt. The Kentucky Coal Education said that draglines are one of the largest machine in the world. These can remove several hundred tons of the material in one pass.

Drills

Drills are very important for miners that extract natural gas and oil. Miners use these machines to reach underground deposits before they pipe the resources to the surface. Instead of being used in gas and oil mining, these machines are also used to mine coal and mineral.

Roof bolters

These machines are used to prevent underground collapses when the mining process is in progress. These are also used to support the tunnel roofs in mining location.

Continuous miners and longwall miners

These machines are usually used by subterranean coal miners. These machines are used to scrape coal from the coal beds. Meanwhile, the longwall miners are machines that are used to remove large, rectangular sections of coal instead of scraping coal from a bed.

Rock duster

These are pressurized pieces of equipment that are used in coal mining to spray inert mineral dust over the highly flammable coal dust. This inert dust will help prevent accidental explosions and fires.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Equipment-Used-in-Mining&id=5633103

Coal Seam Gas - Extraction and Processing

With rapidly depleting natural resources, people around the globe are looking for new sources of energy. Lots of people don't think much of it, but doing this is an excellent ecological move forward and may even be a lucrative endeavour. Australia has one the most significant deposits of a recently discovered gas known as coal seam gas. The deposit present in areas such as New South Wales is far more significant than the others since it contains little methane and much more carbon dioxide.

What is coal seam gas?

Coal bed methane is the more general term for this substance. It is a form of natural gas taken from substantial coal beds. The existence of this material usually spelled hazard for many sites. This stopped in recent decades, when specialists discovered its potential as an energy source. It's now among the most important sources of energy in a number of countries, particularly in North America. Extraction within australia is actually rapidly developing because of rich deposits in various parts of the country.

Extraction

The extraction procedure is reasonably challenging. It calls for heavy drilling, water pumping, and tubing. Though there are a variety of different processes, pipeline construction(an initial step) is perhaps one of the most important. The foundation of the course of action can spell a real difference between the failure or success of your undertaking.

Working with a Contractor

Pipeline construction and design is serious business. Seasoned contractors may be hard to get considering the fact that Australia's coal seam gas industry is still fairly young. You'll find only a limited number of completed and working projects across the country. There are several things to consider when getting a contractor for the project.

Find one with substantial experience within the industry sector. Some service providers have operations outside the country, especially in Canada And America. This is something you should look out for, as advancement of the gas originated there. Providers with completed projects in the said area can have the solutions required for any project to take off.

The construction process involves several basic steps. It is important the service provider you work with addresses all of your needs. Below are a few of the important supplementary services to look for.

- Pipeline design, production, and installation

- Custom ploughing (to achieve specialized trenching requirements)

- Protection and repair of pipelines with the use of various liners

- Pressure assessment and commissioning

These are only the fundamentals of pipeline construction. Sourcing coal seam gas involves many others. Do thorough research to ensure the service provider you employ is capable of completing all the necessary tasks. Other elements of the undertaking include engineering plus site preparation and rehabilitation. This industrial sector may be profitable if one makes all of the proper moves.

Avoid making uninformed decisions by doing as much research as you possibly can. Use the web to your advantage to look into a company's profile. Look for a portfolio of the projects they have completed in the past. You can gauge their trustworthiness based on their volume of clients. Check out the scope of their operations and the projects they finished.

You should also think about company policies concerning the quality of their work, safety and health, along with their policies concerning communities and the environment. These are seemingly minute but important details when searching for a contractor for pipeline construction projects.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Coal-Seam-Gas---Extraction-and-Processing&id=6954936

Keene Labs: Create Beautiful Word Clouds With Scraped Data

Without innovation it’s impossible for consultancies to offer services that represent real added value. So we test innovative new technologies by pushing them through Keene Labs. Our dedicated project area where we work with open source communities to develop new products that improve our services.

One of the tools we’ve been delivering client work and experimenting with is called import.io. Through using crawlers, the tool can turn any webpage into raw data – this in turn can be manipulated in a number of ways. The tool itself was built by a young tech startup based in London who I had the pleasure of meeting at the end of last year.

In the screen capture video below I show you how you can use import.io to scrape data from a blog and then present this data as a beautiful word cloud using Tagul. It’s my first screen capture ever – so don’t pass too much negative judgment!

Source:http://www.keenecomms.com/2015/02/05/keene-labs-create-beautiful-word-clouds-with-scraped-data/

Data Mining Services in various types

How Companies Can the Most with Data Mining Services

The modern way to use data, effectively.

Data Mining is an act of transferring data into beneficial Information and actionable insight. Often known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD), Data Mining is a automated process to uncover a series of never-seen-before information in bulk quantities of data scenario. Post evaluating a series of random factors, which the human mind cannot easily look at or comprehend, it helps in reaching towards an actionable insight by means of progressive mathematical algorithms. These data mining reports are further distributed among esteemed influencers and stakeholders, and are used for enterprise-caliber data mining observations in an insightful manner.

The Process of Data Mining

Here’s a lowdown of a few used cases of how companies are using Data Mining Services in business: ASSOCIATION: Catching hold of frequently appearing observations. For instance, if you want to know which products are regularly purchased in pair, and could be offered together in a combo offer to boost sales.

CLASSIFICATION: Allowing the Data Mining experts at LoginWorks Software to attach observations towards repeated financial patterns of existing groups or categories. For instance, spotting fraudulent transactions or possibly bankrupt companies.

CLUSTERING:Identifying similarities and common ground between observations and groups. For instance, creating profiles for website users or clients by mapping website usage pattern and customer behavior.

DESCRIPTION:Detailing out patterns and showcasing them in a visual manner using explanatory analysis.

ESTIMATION: Revealing features that are difficult to observe with a straight-lined approach because of cost of observation or technical problems. PREDICTION: Predicting an estimated future using previous and present observations. for examples, predicting sales for the next financial period.

What are the Strategic Benefits of Incorporating Data Mining

A Comprehensive suite of Data Mining Services can help your company to:

•    Iron out strategic business problems with the use of number crunching, predictive and inferential analysis.

•    Recuperate your data mining atmosphere by making use of advanced algorithms, artificial neural networks, induction techniques, along with in-data and base-data mining technologies.

•    Automate business trends, understand human behavior and patterns predictions.

•    Do away with complexities of difficult-to-comprehend statistics and, need not necessarily require users to make use of complex applications/interface. Instead, we deliver compact results in the form of touch points, such as Excel, CSV, XML, text file and more.

•    Achieve high-end connectivity and communication capabilities.

The Power of LOGINWORKS Data Mining Services.

LOGINWORKS SOFTAWARES Data Mining Service is an advanced solution for predictive analytics designed to help companies in their strategic decision making. An ongoing process of discovery and interpretation, data mining unearths new and reliable patterns in your accumulated data and patterns, which you can make use of to adhere to testing business questions that calls for constant prediction and inference. With the ever evolving increase of business complexities, as well as the quantity and multiplicity of data, there’s a buzzing need for methods that are intelligently mechanical in nature and are backed by LOGINWORKS SOFTAWARES’ expert support; and data mining that fits the need of today’s businesses aptly. By and large, predictive data mining services makes use of pattern recognition technologies and statistical tools to help accelerate strategic business decisions and lead to more informed conversations with the target audience.

What is offered in our Data Mining Service.

•    First stage of discussion and estimating future direction: If your company would like to gain a competitive edge from our high-calibre Data Mining Services, do get in touch with our sales team at sales@loginworks.com so as to help you in understanding the most advanced benefits and opportunities.

•    Sharing feasibility statistics and studies: If you or your company has a clear view point of how you would want to make use of Data Mining in your flow of business, then do share with us your requirement to ask for a quote.

•    Segmentation and Profitability: Right from assessing the initial assessment to assessing the benefits and completing the data, we’ll share with you a comprehensive report on understanding of data needs.

•    The Final Stage: Data Mining Implementation Service: As soon as the Data Mining requirement is clearly undertstood, we build customized solutions to collect data in an automated fashion and export structured data into usable format.

BIG DATA SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES

Big data swiftly harnesses the ever-increasing volume on data on day-to-day basis and the incessant need of enterprisers to harness the true business value of such data in a quick turnaround time. Opening gates to a world of opportunities to find new and insightful calculations, Big Data can be generated at a variety of myriad speeds and types. This data further lends organizations, especially the burgeoning e-commerce industry of today, a competitive advantage, where estimated predictions becomes the bedrock of constant in-flow of costs and revenue.

LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES BIG DATA ADVANTAGE

Unearth the power of the accumulated data by making significant inroads into the digital revolution of 21st century. Leverage the advantage by using LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES end-to-end Big Data Solutions and Services. Our passion, backed with years of domain expertise and rich technical prowess empowers you to outline a Big Data strategy for your business to help uplift your overall IT roadmap, architect and re-imagine your business strategies. With us, you get the following services: Our all-encompassing  THINK, DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT model for Big Data Services aids you to pick up the best strategies to adopt and use data. Our principle areas of focus for Big Data services are:

•    Big Data Management for the IT Organization
•    Big Data Analytics for the Business Organization

*change the Think, Build and Operate Model headline with THINK, DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT model. big data process chart LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES Data Mining Services, also known as Loginworks DataStream is a perfect amalgamation of unlimited volumes, robust technology and matchless expertise. What sets up apart is our one-of-a-kind personalised approach, which makes use of optimal data warehouse technology. IF YOU ARE READY TO TAKE THE ADVANTAGE OF DATA MINING AND BOOST YOUR BUSINESS

– CONTACT LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES TODAY!

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/data-mining-services-various-types/