Data Mining
Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques
Slides for Chapter 1 of Data Mining by I. H. Witten, E. Frank and
M. A. Hall
Whats it all about?
Data vs information
Data mining and machine learning
Structural descriptions
Rules: classification and association
Decision trees
Datasets
Weather, contact lens, CPU performance, labor negotiation data,
soybean classification
Fielded applications
Ranking web pages, loan applications, screening images, load
forecasting, machine fault diagnosis, market basket analysis
Generalization as search
Data mining and ethics
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Chapter 1) 2
Data vs. information
Society produces huge amounts of data
Sources: business, science, medicine, economics,
geography, environment, sports,
Potentially valuable resource
Raw data is useless: need techniques to automatically
extract information from it
Data: recorded facts
Information: patterns underlying the data
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Chapter 1) 3
Information is crucial
Example 1: in vitro fertilization
Given: embryos described by 60 features
Problem: selection of embryos that will survive
Data: historical records of embryos and outcome
Example 2: cow culling
Given: cows described by 700 features
Problem: selection of cows that should be culled
Data: historical records and farmers decisions
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Data mining
Extracting
implicit,
previously unknown,
potentially useful
information from data
Needed: programs that detect patterns and regularities
in the data
Strong patterns good predictions
Problem 1: most patterns are not interesting
Problem 2: patterns may be inexact (or spurious)
Problem 3: data may be garbled or missing
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Machine learning techniques
Algorithms for acquiring structural descriptions from
examples
Structural descriptions represent patterns explicitly
Can be used to predict outcome in new situation
Can be used to understand and explain how prediction is
derived
(may be even more important)
Methods originate from artificial intelligence,
statistics, and research on databases
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Structural descriptions
Example: if-then rules
If tear production rate = reduced
then recommendation = none
Otherwise, if age = young and astigmatic = no
then recommendation = soft
Age Spectacle Astigmatism Tear production Recommended
prescription rate lenses
Young Myope No Reduced None
Young Hypermetrope No Normal Soft
Pre-presbyopic Hypermetrope No Reduced None
Presbyopic Myope Yes Normal Hard
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Can machines really learn?
Definitions of learning from dictionary:
To get knowledge of by study,
experience, or being taught
Difficult to measure
To become aware by information or
from observation
To commit to memory Trivial for computers
To be informed of, ascertain; to receive
instruction
Operational definition:
Things learn when they change their
behavior in a way that makes them perform
Does a slipper learn?
better in the future.
Does learning imply intention?
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The weather problem
Conditions for playing a certain game
Outlook Temperature Humidity Windy Play
Sunny Hot High False No
Sunny Hot High True No
Overcast Hot High False Yes
Rainy Mild Normal False Yes
If outlook = sunny and humidity = high then play = no
If outlook = rainy and windy = true then play = no
If outlook = overcast then play = yes
If humidity = normal then play = yes
If none of the above then play = yes
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Chapter 1) 9
Ross Quinlan
Machine learning researcher from 1970s
University of Sydney, Australia
1986 Induction of decision trees ML Journal
1993 C4.5: Programs for machine learning.
Morgan Kaufmann
199? Started
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Classification vs. association rules
Classification rule:
predicts value of a given attribute (the classification of an example)
If outlook = sunny and humidity = high
then play = no
Association rule:
predicts value of arbitrary attribute (or combination)
If temperature = cool then humidity = normal
If humidity = normal and windy = false
then play = yes
If outlook = sunny and play = no
then humidity = high
If windy = false and play = no
then outlook = sunny and humidity = high
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Weather data with mixed attributes
Some attributes have numeric values
Outlook Temperature Humidity Windy Play
Sunny 85 85 False No
Sunny 80 90 True No
Overcast 83 86 False Yes
Rainy 75 80 False Yes
If outlook = sunny and humidity > 83 then play = no
If outlook = rainy and windy = true then play = no
If outlook = overcast then play = yes
If humidity < 85 then play = yes
If none of the above then play = yes
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The contact lenses data
Age Spectacle prescription Astigmatism Tear production rate Recommended
lenses
Young Myope No Reduced None
Young Myope No Normal Soft
Young Myope Yes Reduced None
Young Myope Yes Normal Hard
Young Hypermetrope No Reduced None
Young Hypermetrope No Normal Soft
Young Hypermetrope Yes Reduced None
Young Hypermetrope Yes Normal hard
Pre-presbyopic Myope No Reduced None
Pre-presbyopic Myope No Normal Soft
Pre-presbyopic Myope Yes Reduced None
Pre-presbyopic Myope Yes Normal Hard
Pre-presbyopic Hypermetrope No Reduced None
Pre-presbyopic Hypermetrope No Normal Soft
Pre-presbyopic Hypermetrope Yes Reduced None
Pre-presbyopic Hypermetrope Yes Normal None
Presbyopic Myope No Reduced None
Presbyopic Myope No Normal None
Presbyopic Myope Yes Reduced None
Presbyopic Myope Yes Normal Hard
Presbyopic Hypermetrope No Reduced None
Presbyopic Hypermetrope No Normal Soft
Presbyopic Hypermetrope Yes Reduced None
Presbyopic Hypermetrope Yes Normal None
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A complete and correct rule set
If tear production rate = reduced then recommendation = none
If age = young and astigmatic = no
and tear production rate = normal then recommendation = soft
If age = pre-presbyopic and astigmatic = no
and tear production rate = normal then recommendation = soft
If age = presbyopic and spectacle prescription = myope
and astigmatic = no then recommendation = none
If spectacle prescription = hypermetrope and astigmatic = no
and tear production rate = normal then recommendation = soft
If spectacle prescription = myope and astigmatic = yes
and tear production rate = normal then recommendation = hard
If age young and astigmatic = yes
and tear production rate = normal then recommendation = hard
If age = pre-presbyopic
and spectacle prescription = hypermetrope
and astigmatic = yes then recommendation = none
If age = presbyopic and spectacle prescription = hypermetrope
and astigmatic = yes then recommendation = none
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A decision tree for this problem
Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Chapter 1) 15
Classifying iris flowers
Sepal length Sepal width Petal length Petal width Type
1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 Iris setosa
2 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2 Iris setosa
51 7.0 3.2 4.7 1.4 Iris versicolor
52 6.4 3.2 4.5 1.5 Iris versicolor
101 6.3 3.3 6.0 2.5 Iris virginica
102 5.8 2.7 5.1 1.9 Iris virginica
If petal length < 2.45 then Iris setosa
If sepal width < 2.10 then Iris versicolor
...
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Predicting CPU performance
Example: 209 different computer configurations
Cycle time Main memory Cache Channels Performance
(ns) (Kb) (Kb)
MYCT MMIN MMAX CACH CHMIN CHMAX PRP
1 125 256 6000 256 16 128 198
2 29 8000 32000 32 8 32 269
208 480 512 8000 32 0 0 67
209 480 1000 4000 0 0 0 45
Linear regression function
PRP = -55.9 + 0.0489 MYCT + 0.0153 MMIN + 0.0056 MMAX
+ 0.6410 CACH - 0.2700 CHMIN + 1.480 CHMAX
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Data from labor negotiations
Attribute Type 1 2 3 40
Duration (Number of years) 1 2 3 2
Wage increase first year Percentage 2% 4% 4.3% 4.5
Wage increase second year Percentage ? 5% 4.4% 4.0
Wage increase third year Percentage ? ? ? ?
Cost of living adjustment {none,tcf,tc} none tcf ? none
Working hours per week (Number of hours) 28 35 38 40
Pension {none,ret-allw, empl-cntr} none ? ? ?
Standby pay Percentage ? 13% ? ?
Shift-work supplement Percentage ? 5% 4% 4
Education allowance {yes,no} yes ? ? ?
Statutory holidays (Number of days) 11 15 12 12
Vacation {below-avg,avg,gen} avg gen gen avg
Long-term disability assistance {yes,no} no ? ? yes
Dental plan contribution {none,half,full} none ? full full
Bereavement assistance {yes,no} no ? ? yes
Health plan contribution {none,half,full} none ? full half
Acceptability of contract {good,bad} bad good good good
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Decision trees for the labor data
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Soybean classification
Attribute Number Sample value
of values
Environment Time of occurrence 7 July
Precipitation 3 Above normal
Seed Condition 2 Normal
Mold growth 2 Absent
Fruit Condition of fruit 4 Normal
pods
Fruit spots 5 ?
Leaf Condition 2 Abnormal
Leaf spot size 3 ?
Stem Condition 2 Abnormal
Stem lodging 2 Yes
Root Condition 3 Normal
Diagnosis 19 Diaporthe stem canker
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The role of domain knowledge
If leaf condition is normal
and stem condition is abnormal
and stem cankers is below soil line
and canker lesion color is brown
then
diagnosis is rhizoctonia root rot
If leaf malformation is absent
and stem condition is abnormal
and stem cankers is below soil line
and canker lesion color is brown
then
diagnosis is rhizoctonia root rot
But in this domain, leaf condition is normal implies
leaf malformation is absent!
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Fielded applications
The result of learningor the learning method itselfis
deployed in practical applications
Processing loan applications
Screening images for oil slicks
Electricity supply forecasting
Diagnosis of machine faults
Marketing and sales
Separating crude oil and natural gas
Reducing banding in rotogravure printing
Finding appropriate technicians for telephone faults
Scientific applications: biology, astronomy, chemistry
Automatic selection of TV programs
Monitoring intensive care patients
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Processing loan applications (American
Express)
Given: questionnaire with
financial and personal information
Question: should money be lent?
Simple statistical method covers 90% of cases
Borderline cases referred to loan officers
But: 50% of accepted borderline cases defaulted!
Solution: reject all borderline cases?
No! Borderline cases are most active customers
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Enter machine learning
1000 training examples of borderline cases
20 attributes:
age
years with current employer
years at current address
years with the bank
other credit cards possessed,
Learned rules: correct on 70% of cases
human experts only 50%
Rules could be used to explain decisions to customers
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Screening images
Given: radar satellite images of coastal waters
Problem: detect oil slicks in those images
Oil slicks appear as dark regions with changing size
and shape
Not easy: lookalike dark regions can be caused by
weather conditions (e.g. high wind)
Expensive process requiring highly trained personnel
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Enter machine learning
Extract dark regions from normalized image
Attributes:
size of region
shape, area
intensity
sharpness and jaggedness of boundaries
proximity of other regions
info about background
Constraints:
Few training examplesoil slicks are rare!
Unbalanced data: most dark regions arent slicks
Regions from same image form a batch
Requirement: adjustable false-alarm rate
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Load forecasting
Electricity supply companies
need forecast of future demand
for power
Forecasts of min/max load for each hour
significant savings
Given: manually constructed load model that assumes
normal climatic conditions
Problem: adjust for weather conditions
Static model consist of:
base load for the year
load periodicity over the year
effect of holidays
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Enter machine learning
Prediction corrected using most similar days
Attributes:
temperature
humidity
wind speed
cloud cover readings
plus difference between actual load and predicted load
Average difference among three most similar days added
to static model
Linear regression coefficients form attribute weights in
similarity function
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Diagnosis of machine faults
Diagnosis: classical domain
of expert systems
Given: Fourier analysis of vibrations measured at
various points of a devices mounting
Question: which fault is present?
Preventative maintenance of electromechanical motors
and generators
Information very noisy
So far: diagnosis by expert/hand-crafted rules
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Enter machine learning
Available: 600 faults with experts diagnosis
~300 unsatisfactory, rest used for training
Attributes augmented by intermediate concepts that
embodied causal domain knowledge
Expert not satisfied with initial rules because they did
not relate to his domain knowledge
Further background knowledge resulted in more
complex rules that were satisfactory
Learned rules outperformed hand-crafted ones
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Marketing and sales I
Companies precisely record massive amounts of
marketing and sales data
Applications:
Customer loyalty:
identifying customers that are likely to defect by detecting
changes in their behavior
(e.g. banks/phone companies)
Special offers:
identifying profitable customers
(e.g. reliable owners of credit cards that need extra money
during the holiday season)
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Marketing and sales II
Market basket analysis
Association techniques find
groups of items that tend to
occur together in a
transaction
(used to analyze checkout data)
Historical analysis of purchasing patterns
Identifying prospective customers
Focusing promotional mailouts
(targeted campaigns are cheaper than mass-marketed
ones)
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Machine learning and statistics
Historical difference (grossly oversimplified):
Statistics: testing hypotheses
Machine learning: finding the right hypothesis
But: huge overlap
Decision trees (C4.5 and CART)
Nearest-neighbor methods
Today: perspectives have converged
Most ML algorithms employ statistical techniques
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Statisticians
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
Born: 17 Feb 1890 London, England
Died: 29 July 1962 Adelaide, Australia
Numerous distinguished contributions to developing the
theory and application of statistics for making
quantitative a vast field of biology
Leo Breiman
Developed decision trees
1984 Classification and Regression
Trees. Wadsworth.
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Generalization as search
Inductive learning: find a concept description that fits
the data
Example: rule sets as description language
Enormous, but finite, search space
Simple solution:
enumerate the concept space
eliminate descriptions that do not fit examples
surviving descriptions contain target concept
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Enumerating the concept space
Search space for weather problem
4 x 4 x 3 x 3 x 2 = 288 possible combinations
With 14 rules 2.7x1034 possible rule sets
Other practical problems:
More than one description may survive
No description may survive
Language is unable to describe target concept
or data contains noise
Another view of generalization as search:
hill-climbing in description space according to pre-specified
matching criterion
Most practical algorithms use heuristic search that cannot guarantee to
find the optimum solution
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Bias
Important decisions in learning systems:
Concept description language
Order in which the space is searched
Way that overfitting to the particular training data is avoided
These form the bias of the search:
Language bias
Search bias
Overfitting-avoidance bias
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Language bias
Important question:
is language universal
or does it restrict what can be learned?
Universal language can express arbitrary subsets of
examples
If language includes logical or (disjunction), it is
universal
Example: rule sets
Domain knowledge can be used to exclude some concept
descriptions a priori from the search
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Search bias
Search heuristic
Greedy search: performing the best single step
Beam search: keeping several alternatives
Direction of search
General-to-specific
E.g. specializing a rule by adding conditions
Specific-to-general
E.g. generalizing an individual instance into a rule
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Overfitting-avoidance bias
Can be seen as a form of search bias
Modified evaluation criterion
E.g. balancing simplicity and number of errors
Modified search strategy
E.g. pruning (simplifying a description)
Pre-pruning: stops at a simple description before search proceeds
to an overly complex one
Post-pruning: generates a complex description first and
simplifies it afterwards
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Data mining and ethics I
Ethical issues arise in
practical applications
Anonymizing data is difficult
85% of Americans can be identified from just zip
code, birth date and sex
Data mining often used to discriminate
E.g. loan applications: using some information (e.g. sex,
religion, race) is unethical
Ethical situation depends on application
E.g. same information ok in medical application
Attributes may contain problematic information
E.g. area code may correlate with race
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Data mining and ethics II
Important questions:
Who is permitted access to the data?
For what purpose was the data collected?
What kind of conclusions can be legitimately drawn from it?
Caveats must be attached to results
Purely statistical arguments are never sufficient!
Are resources put to good use?
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