Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 6: Data Mining

Posted on by Reza Rad

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Data Scientist is a hot job nowadays in the market and there are lots of demand for it. Data Science origins from the BI field and sits under umbrella of Business Intelligence, because the data science and data mining helps decision makers in their decision making process. To have an idea about how data mining can solve real world issues, think about loyalty program of the super market that you usually use close to  your home. Loyalty program simply analyze your purchase history and based on that it comes up with some suggestion and prediction about your next purchases and will promote that through your cell phone text messages or email or even flyers directly addressed to your home address.

Fortunately technology has been quite powerful at this stage and there are number of tools that you can use for data mining. Data Mining consists of two types of analysis: Descriptive Analysis and Predictive Analysis. Descriptive Analysis is about analyzing data from the past, and Predictive analysis is predicting the future based on existing data and the model found in the data. Data Mining contains sophisticated mathematics algorithms that can understand the patterns in the data and analyze it. However don’t worry if you are not a mathematician, there are some good Data Mining tools in the market that do the hard job for you.

Book: Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know About Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking

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9-1- SQL Server Analysis Services Data Mining

Microsoft offered two tools for Data Mining so far. The first and older tool is SQL Server Analysis Services which enables you to create mining models and structures in Business Intelligence Development Studio or SQL Server Data Tools, and then publish it on the server, so the model can be used for analysis. This technology has been released in 2000 with SQL Server product, but it has been improved significantly in 2005 version of this product. Data Mining still is part of SSAS and SQL Server product nowadays. There are heaps of blog posts and videos about SSAS data Mining. However there are not that much books that deeply discuss features of this service. The book that I suggest here might be old, but the technology of SSAS data mining didn’t changed a lot after that time, and still this counts as one of the best books in this field.

Video: Session Recording of SQL PASS Rally 2015 Nordic: Show Me Potential Customers; Data Mining Approach

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This video gives you a brief understanding of data mining with SSAS. you will see practical examples of it through the video.

Book: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008

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This is one of the best books for SSAS Data mining, it has many examples with deep technical chapters. there is even a chapter for extending SSAS Data Mining if you want!

 

9-2- Azure Machine Learning

Microsoft recently released a new service as part of Microsoft Azure services named Azure Machine Learning or Azure ML. This is Microsoft new data mining technology which works cloud based, with great collaboration with data mining powerful engine of R, and is highly extensible. This technology is new, but there is a very good documentation on Azure website for that with bunch of tutorial videos, there also couple of books that I would like to mention below.

Azure website Videos:

 

 

Azure ML Documentation

 

Book: Predictive Analytics with Microsoft Azure Machine Learning

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Book: Azure Machine Learning Essentials: Free eBook

This one is great free eBook that published recently.

 

Related Posts:

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 0: Prerequisites

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 1: Fundamentals, Data Warehouse and ETL

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 2: Modelling with BISM

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 3: Data Governance

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 4: Data Visualization

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 5: Power BI

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 6: Data Mining

Walk-through Steps: I’m New to BI, Where to Start? – Part 7: Azure

 

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Reza Rad
Trainer, Consultant, Mentor
Reza Rad is a Microsoft Regional Director, an Author, Trainer, Speaker and Consultant. He has a BSc in Computer engineering; he has more than 20 years’ experience in data analysis, BI, databases, programming, and development mostly on Microsoft technologies. He is a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for 12 continuous years (from 2011 till now) for his dedication in Microsoft BI. Reza is an active blogger and co-founder of RADACAD. Reza is also co-founder and co-organizer of Difinity conference in New Zealand, Power BI Summit, and Data Insight Summit.
Reza is author of more than 14 books on Microsoft Business Intelligence, most of these books are published under Power BI category. Among these are books such as Power BI DAX Simplified, Pro Power BI Architecture, Power BI from Rookie to Rock Star, Power Query books series, Row-Level Security in Power BI and etc.
He is an International Speaker in Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft Business Applications Summit, Data Insight Summit, PASS Summit, SQL Saturday and SQL user groups. And He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer.
Reza’s passion is to help you find the best data solution, he is Data enthusiast.
His articles on different aspects of technologies, especially on MS BI, can be found on his blog: https://radacad.com/blog.

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