But it's starting to find its way into the mainstream. Anywhere you have historical data, you can use it to get patterns that you can't see with the human eye. Retailers that sell products via catalogs and Web sites routinely increase their return on investment by more than 1,000 percent by using data mining, according to SAS statisticians. Then we came in and they were amazed. You look at who they're targeting, what they're sending and how often, and the frequency of repeat purchasers.
Data mining is likely to penetrate society further as the technology becomes easier to use.
It was just paying attention to what people wanted to do. Though it seems logical, the practice of simplifying data-mining results has its detractors. Fayyad and other experts warn that excessive simplification can skew results and lead executives to make pricing or inventory decisions based on faulty reasoning. Ds who enter corporate environments, calling them turncoats pandering to marketers. It was OK if the technology behind it wouldn't get you a Nobel Prize.