Data mining is the analysis of data for relationships that have not previously been discovered. For example, the sales records for a particular brand of fishing rod might, if sufficiently analyzed and related to other market data, reveal a seasonal correlation with the purchase by the same parties of camping equipment.

Data mining results include:

• Associations, or when one event can be correlated to another event (e.g., soft drink purchasers buy popcorn a certain percentage of the time)
• Sequences, or one event leading to another later event (e.g., a dining room table and chairs purchase followed by a purchase of chandeliers)
• Classification, or the recognition of patterns and a resulting new organization of data (e.g., profiles of customers who make purchases over $100)
• Clustering, or finding and visualizing groups of facts not previously known
• Forecasting, or simply discovering patterns in the data that can...