Rajalakshmi Engineering College

Question Bank

Subject: Data Warehousing and Mining

UNIT-1

1. Define data warehouse.

A data warehouse is a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources

Organized under a unified schema at a single site to facilitate management decision
making. (Or)
A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, time-variant and nonvolatile collection of data in
support of managements decision-making process.

2. What are operational databases?

Organizations maintain large database that are updated by daily transactions are
called operational databases.

3. How is a data warehouse different from a database?

Data warehouse is a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources, organized

under a unified schema at a single site in order to facilitate management decision-making.
Database consists of a collection of interrelated data.

4. What is the significant use of subject oriented data warehouse?

Focusing on the modeling and analysis of data for decision makers, not on daily
operations or transaction processing. Provide a simple and concise view around particular
subject issues by excluding data that are not useful in the decision support process.

5. What are the Characteristics of Data warehouse?

A data warehouse can be viewed as an information system with the following attributes:
It is a database designed for analytical tasks
Its content is periodically updated
It contains current and historical data to provide a historical perspective of information.

6. Why we need separate data warehouse?

Different functions and different data:

 Missing data: Decision support requires historical data which operational DBs do not
typically maintain

Data consolidation: DS requires consolidation (aggregation, summarization) of data

from heterogeneous sources

Data quality: different sources typically use inconsistent data representations, codes
and formats which have to be reconciled.

7. What are the benefits of data warehousing

Tangible benefits (quantified / measureable):It includes,

Improvement in product inventory
Decrement in production cost
Improvement in selection of target markets
Enhancement in asset and liability management
Intangible benefits (not easy to quantified): It includes,
Improvement in productivity by keeping all data in single location and eliminating
rekeying of data
Reduced redundant processing
Enhanced customer relation
8. What are the three classes of data warehouse user?

- Casual users
- Power Users
- Expert users

9. What are the applications of data warehousing?

Three kinds of data warehouse applications

Information processing

supports querying, basic statistical analysis, and reporting using crosstabs, tables, charts
and graphs

Analytical processing

Multidimensional analysis of data warehouse data

supports basic OLAP operations, slice-dice, drilling, pivoting

Data mining
 Knowledge discovery from hidden patterns

Supports associations, constructing analytical models, performing classification and

prediction, and presenting the mining results using visualization tools.

10. What are the issues to be considered while data sourcing, cleanup, transformation
and integration?

- Data heterogeneity
- Technical Meta data
- Business Meta data
- Managed Query tools
- OLAP Tools
- Scalability
- Data integration

11. Define Operational data store (ODS).

ODS is an architecture concept to support day-to-day operational decision support and
contains current value data propagated from operational applications
ODS is subject-oriented, similar to a classic definition of a Data warehouse
ODS is integrated
12. List out the views in the design of a data warehouse?

_ Top-down view
_ Data source view
_ Data warehouse view
_ Business query view

13. List out the steps of the data warehouse design process?

_ Choose a business process to model.

_ Choose the grain of the business process
_ Choose the dimensions that will apply to each fact table record.
_ Choose the measures that will populate each fact table record.

14. What is enterprise warehouse?

An enterprise warehouse collects all the informations about subjects spanning the entire
organization. It provides corporate-wide data integration, usually from one (or)
more operational systems (or) external information providers. It contains detailed data as
well as summarized data and can range in size from a few giga bytes to hundreds of giga
bytes, tera bytes (or) beyond.

15. What is data mart?

 Data mart is a database that contains a subset of data present in a data warehouse.
Data marts are created to structure the data in a data warehouse according to issues such
as hardware platforms and access control strategies. We can divide a data warehouse into
data marts after the data warehouse has been created. Data marts are usually implemented
on low-cost departmental servers that are UNIX (or) windows/NT based.

16. What are dependent and independent data marts?

Dependent data marts are sourced directly from enterprise data warehouses.
Independent data marts are data captured from one (or) more operational systems (or)
external information providers (or) data generated locally with in particular department
(or) geographic area.

17. What is virtual warehouse?

A virtual warehouse is a set of views over operational databases. For efficient

query processing, only some of the possible summary views may be materialized. A
virtual warehouse is easy to build but requires excess capability on operational database
servers.

18. What are the disadvantages of storing data at detailed level?

- The complexity of design increases with increasing level of detail.

- It takes large amount of space to store data at detail level, hence increased cost.
19. Define data cube?

It consists of a large set of facts (or) measures and a number of dimensions.

20. What are facts?

Facts are numerical measures. Facts can also be considered as quantities by which
we can analyze the relationship between dimensions

21. What are dimensions?

Dimensions are the entities (or) perspectives with respect to an organization for
keeping records and are hierarchical in nature.

22. Define dimension table?

A dimension table is used for describing the dimension.

(e.g.) A dimension table for item may contain the attributes item_ name, brand and type.

23. Define fact table?

 Fact table contains the name of facts (or) measures as well as keys to each of the
related dimensional tables.

24.What are lattice of cuboids?

In data warehousing research literature, a cube can also be called as cuboids. For
different (or) set of dimensions, we can construct a lattice of cuboids, each showing the
data at different level. The lattice of cuboids is also referred to as data cube.

25.What is apex cuboid?

The 0-D cuboid which holds the highest level of summarization is called the apex
cuboid. The apex cuboid is typically denoted by all.

26.List out the components of star schema?

A large central table (fact table) containing the bulk of data with no
Redundancy. A set of smaller attendant tables (dimension tables), one for each
dimension.

27.What are the characteristics of star schema?

Simple structure -> easy to understand schema

Great query effectives -> small number of tables to join
Relatively long time of loading data into dimension tables -> de-normalization,
redundancy data caused that size of the table could be large.
The most commonly used in the data warehouse implementations -> widely
supported by a large number of business intelligence tools
28.What is snowflake schema?

The snowflake schema is a variant of the star schema model, where some
dimension tables are normalized thereby further splitting the tables in to additional tables.

29.List out the components of fact constellation schema?

This requires multiple fact tables to share dimension tables. This kind of schema
can be viewed as a collection of stars and hence it is known as galaxy schema (or) fact
constellation schema.

30.Point out the major difference between the star schema and the snowflake
schema?

The dimension table of the snowflake schema model may be kept in normalized
form to reduce redundancies. Such a table is easy to maintain and saves storage space.
31.Which is popular in the data warehouse design, star schema model (or)
snowflake schema model?

Star schema model, because the snowflake structure can reduce the effectiveness
and more joins will be needed to execute a query.

32.How the operation is performed in waterfall method?

The waterfall method performs a structured and systematic analysis at each step
before proceeding to the next, which is like a waterfall falling from one step to the next.

33.How the operation is performed in spiral method?

The spiral method involves the rapid generation of increasingly functional

systems, with short intervals between successive releases. This is considered as a good
choice for the data warehouse development especially for data marts, because the turn
around time is short, modifications can be done quickly and new designs and
technologies can be adapted in a timely manner.

35.Define indexing?

Indexing is a technique, which is used for efficient data retrieval (or) accessing
data in a faster manner. When a table grows in volume, the indexes also increase in size
requiring more storage.

36.What are the types of indexing?

_ B-Tree indexing
_ Bit map indexing
_ Join indexing

37.Define metadata?

Metadata is used in data warehouse is used for describing data about data.
(i.e.) Meta data are the data that define warehouse objects. Metadata are created for the
data names and definitions of the given warehouse.

38. Define VLDB.

Very Large Data Base. If a database whose size is greater than 100GB, then
the database is said to be very large database.
39.What are the different data base architectures of parallel processing?

1. Shared memory or shared everything Architecture

2. Shared disk architecture
3. Shred nothing architecture
40.What is data partitioning? What are the different types of data partitioning?
Data partitioning is the key component for effective parallel execution of data base
operations. Partition can be done randomly or intelligently.
41.What are the five categories of access tools used in data warehouse for decision
making?
- Data query and reporting tools
- Application development tools
- Executive info system tools (EIS)
- OLAP tools
- Data mining tools
42.List out the advantages and disadvantages of parallel processing of shared system.
Parallel processing advantages of shared disk systems are as follows:
Shared disk systems permit high availability. All data is accessible even if one node
dies.
These systems have the concept of one database, which is an advantage over shared
nothing systems.
Shared disk systems provide for incremental growth.
Parallel processing disadvantages of shared disk systems are these:
Inter-node synchronization is required, involving DLM overhead and greater
dependency on high-speed interconnect.
If the workload is not partitioned well, there may be high synchronization overhead.
There is operating system overhead of running shared disk software.
43.What are the advantages and disadvantages of parallel processing of shared nothing
architecture?
Advantages
Shared nothing systems provide for incremental growth.
System growth is practically unlimited.
MPPs are good for read-only databases and decision support applications.
Failure is local: if one node fails, the others stay up.
Disadvantages
More coordination is required.
More overhead is required for a process working on a disk belonging to another node.
 If there is a heavy workload of updates or inserts, as in an online transaction
processing system, it may be worthwhile to consider data-dependent routing to
alleviate contention.
44. What are the features of parallel DBMS?
Scope and techniques of parallel DBMS operations
Optimizer implementation
Application transparency
Parallel environment which allows the DBMS server to take full advantage of the
existing facilities on a very low level
DBMS management tools help to configure, tune, admin and monitor a parallel
RDBMS as effectively as if it were a serial RDBMS
Price / Performance: The parallel RDBMS can demonstrate a non linear speed up and
scale up at reasonable costs.

UNIT-II

1. What are the five categories of decision support tool?

- Reporting
- Managed query
- Executive Information System
- Online Analytical Processing
- Data Mining

2.What is Cognous Impromptu?

 Impromptu is an interactive database reporting tool. It allows power users to query data
without programming knowledge. When using the Impromptu tool, no data is written or changed
in the database. It is only capable of reading the data.
3.What are duties of Impromptu Request Server?
-Sending query process to the server.
-Request server will execute the request, generating the result on the server.
-After the producing the result it notifies the client, so that client to do other things.
-Supports data maintained in ORACLE 7.x and SYBASE
4.What is reporting?
Easy build and run their own reports
Contains predefined templates for mailing, labels, invoices, sales reports, and custom automation
5.List the three different types of reporting,
1. Creation and viewing of standard reports Routine delivery of report
2. Definition and creation of ad hoc reports managers and business users to quickly
create their own reports and get quick answers
3. Data exploration Users can easily surf through data without a preset path.

6.What are all the duties of Picklists and prompts?

creating report for which users can select from lists of values called picklist.
Reports containing too many values for a single variable, Impromptu offers prompt.
It allows to supply value at run time

7.What is the use of Custom template?

Users can apply their data to the placeholders contained in the template Templates standard logic,
calculations, and layout complete the report automatically in the users choice of format

8.What is Exception reporting?List its types.

Ability to report high light values that lie outside accepted ranges.
Three types of exception report
Conditional filters. Only those values that are outside defined threshold, or define ranges to
organize data for quick evaluation. E.g. Sales under Rs.10000.
Conditional highlighting. Formatting data on the basis of data values.
E.g. Sales over Rs. 10000 always appear blue.
Conditional display. Display report object under certain conditions.
E.g. Sales graph only if the sales are below a predefined value.
9.What is frame?
Frames are building blocks that may be used to produce reports.
Frames formatted with fonts, border, colors, shading, etc.,
Frames combined to create complex reports
Templates can be created with multiframes.
List frames
Form frames
Cross-tab frames
Chart frames
Text frames
Picture frames
OLE frames
10.What are the Management functionality through the use of governers can control?
Query activity
Processing location
Database connections
Reporting permissions
User profiles
Client/server balancing
Database transactions
Security by value
Field and table security

11.What are the features of Impromptu?

- Unified query and reporting interface
-Object oriented architecture
-Complete integration with Power Play
 -Scalability:
-Security and Control
-Data presented in a business context
-Over 70 pre defined report templates
-Frame based reporting
-Business relevant reporting
-Database independent catalogs
12.What is power builder?
Delivers key attraction of object oriented applicationdevelopment,including
encapsulation of application object,polymorphism,the ability to inherit forms and GUI
objects,once the object has been created and tested,it can then be reused by other
application
13.What is Forte?
It is three tiered architecture Client, Application business logic, and Data server.
Rapid development, testing, and deployment of distributed client/server applications
across any enterprise.
14.What is the use of Query painter?
QueryPainter used to generate of SQL statements that can be stored in PowerBuilder
libraries.Thus, using Application Painter, Window Painter, and DataWindows Painter
facilites, a simple client/server application can be constructed literally in minutes.
A rich set of SQL functions is supported, including CONNECT/DISCONNECT,
DECLARE, OPEN, and CLOSE cursor, FETCH, and COMMIT/ROLLBACK.
15.What are the responsibilities of Application Painter?
First identifies basic details and components of new or existing applications
Application icon displays a hierarchical view of the application structure.
All levels can be expanded or contracted with a click of the right mouse button.
Creating and naming new applications, selection of an application icon, setting of the
library search path, and defining of default text characteristics.
Supports all events
16.What is the use of window painter?
Window Painter
 Used to create and maintain PowerBuilder window objects.Supports creation main
application window, pop-up, dialog, and MDI.Operations are performed by drag and drop
and click operations.PowerScript Painter allows to select from a list of events and
global and local variables. Object browser displays attributes of any object, data type
and structures.
17.What does it provides windows provider?

Dynamic objects that provide access to databases and other data sources such as ASCII
files.Applications use this to connect to multiple databases and files, as well as import
and export data in a variety of formats such as dBase, Excel, Lotus.It also supports stored
procedure.It allows developers to select a number of presentation styles from the list of
tabular, grid, label, and free form.
18.List some features of distributed power builder
-Fast Combiled code
-Practical Application Partitioning
-Extented OLE 2 support-OLE 2automation
-Windows 95 Logo Compliance
-scalability team-development-object cycle
New data windows

19.What does it provides focus fusion?

Fast query and reporting
Its advanced indexing, parallel queryn and rollup facilities
Comprehensive, graphics-based administration facilities
Database applications easy to build
Integrated copy management facilities
Automatic data refresh from any source into Fusion
Open access via industry-standard protocols
Through ANSI SQL, ODBC, and HTTP

20. Define OLTP?

If an on-line operational database systems is used for efficient retrieval, efficient storage and
management of large amounts of data, then the system is said to be on-linetransaction
processing.
21.Define OLAP?

Data warehouse systems serves users (or) knowledge workers in the role of data
analysis and decision-making. Such systems can organize and present data in various
formats. These systems are known as on-line analytical processing systems.

22.List the distinct features of OLTP with OLAP.

Distinct features (OLTP vs. OLAP):

User and system orientation: customer vs. market

Data contents: current, detailed vs. historical, consolidated

Database design: ER + application vs. star + subject

View: current, local vs. evolutionary, integrated

Access patterns: update vs. read-only but complex queries

23.How a database design is represented in OLTP systems?

Entity-relation model

24. How a database design is represented in OLAP systems?

Star schema
Snowflake schema
Fact constellation schema

25. Write short notes on multidimensional data model?

Data warehouses and OLTP tools are based on a multidimensional data model.
This model is used for the design of corporate data warehouses and department data
Marts. This model contains a Star schema, Snowflake schema and Fact constellation
schemas. The core of the multidimensional model is the data cube.
26.List out the OLAP operations in multidimensional data model?

_ Roll-up
_ Drill-down
_ Slice and dice
_ Pivot (or) rotate

27.What is roll-up operation?

The roll-up operation is also called drill-up operation which performs aggregation
on a data cube either by climbing up a concept hierarchy for a dimension (or) by
dimension reduction.

28.What is drill-down operation?

Drill-down is the reverse of roll-up operation. It navigates from less detailed data
to more detailed data. Drill-down operation can be taken place by stepping down a
concept hierarchy for a dimension.

29.What is slice operation?

The slice operation performs a selection on one dimension of the cube resulting in
a sub cube.

30.What is dice operation?

The dice operation defines a sub cube by performing a selection on two (or) more
dimensions.

31.What is pivot operation?

This is a visualization operation that rotates the data axes in an alternative

presentation of the data.
32.Define ROLAP?

The ROLAP model is an extended relational DBMS that maps operations on

multidimensional data to standard relational operations.

33.Define MOLAP?

The MOLAP model is a special purpose server that directly implements

multidimensional data and operations.

34.Define HOLAP?
The hybrid OLAP approach combines ROLAP and MOLAP technology,
benefiting from the greater scalability of ROLAP and the faster computation of
MOLAP,(i.e.) a HOLAP server may allow large volumes of detail data to be stored in a
relational database, while aggregations are kept in a separate MOLAP store.

List the multidimensional measure of data quality?

i) Accuracy

ii) Completeness

iii) Consistency

iv) Timeliness

v) Believability

vi) Value added

vii) Interpretability

viii) Accessibilit

35.Why we need online analytical mining?

m. High quality of data in data warehouses

i. DW contains integrated, consistent, cleaned data

n. Available information processing structure surrounding data warehouses

i. ODBC, OLEDB, Web accessing, service facilities, reporting and OLAP tools

o. OLAP-based exploratory data analysis

i. mining with drilling, dicing, pivoting, etc.

p. On-line selection of data mining functions

i. integration and swapping of multiple mining functions, algorithms, and tasks.

36.Define concept hierarchy?

A concept hierarchy defines a sequence of mappings from a set of low-level

concepts to higher-level concepts.
37.Define total order?

If the attributes of a dimension which forms a concept hierarchy such as

street<city< province_or_state <country, then it is said to be total order.
Country
Province or state
City
Street
Fig: Partial order for location

38.Define partial order?

If the attributes of a dimension which forms a lattice such as

day<{month<quarter; week}<year, then it is said to be partial order.

39. Define schema hierarchy?

A concept hierarchy that is a total (or) partial order among attributes in a database
schema is called a schema hierarchy.
40. What does it mean the Impromptu Information Catalog.

A LAN based repository of business knowledge and data access rules. Protects the database from
repeated queries and unnecessary processing. Presents the database in a way that reflects how the
business is organized, and uses the terminology of the business. Enables business-relevant
reporting through business rules

UNIT III
1. Define Data mining.

It refers to extracting or mining knowledge from large amount of data. Data

mining is a process of discovering interesting knowledge from large amounts of data
stored either, in database, data warehouse, or other information repositories

2. Give some alternative terms for data mining.

Knowledge mining
Knowledge extraction
Data/pattern analysis.
Data Archaeology
Data dredging

3. What is KDD?
KDD-Knowledge Discovery in Databases.

4. What are the steps involved in KDD process.

Data cleaning
Data Mining
Pattern Evaluation
Knowledge Presentation
Data Integration
Data Selection
Data Transformation

5. What is the use of the knowledge base?

Knowledge base is domain knowledge that is used to guide search or evaluate the
Interestingness of resulting pattern. Such knowledge can include concept hierarchies used
to organize attribute /attribute values in to different levels of abstraction of Data Mining.

6. Arcitecture of a typical data mining system.

Knowledge base

7.Mention some of the data mining techniques.

Statistics
Machine learning
Decision Tree
Hidden markov models
Artificial Intelligence
Genetic Algorithm
Meta learning

8.Give few statistical techniques.

Point Estimation
Data Summarization
Bayesian Techniques
Testing Hypothesis
Correlation
Regression

9. What is Meta learning?

Concept of combining the predictions made from multiple models of data

mining and analyzing those predictions to formulate a new and previously unknown
prediction.
GUI
Pattern Evaluation
Database or Data warehouse
Server
DB DW

10. Define Genetic algorithm.

Search algorithm.
Enables us to locate optimal binary string by processing an initial
random population of binary strings by performing operations such asartificial mutation ,
crossover and selection.

11.What is the purpose of Data mining Technique?

It provides a way to use various data mining tasks.

12.Define Predictive model.

It is used to predict the values of data by making use of known results from a
different set of sample data.

13.Data mining tasks that are belongs to predictive model.

Classification
Regression
Time series analysis

14.Define descriptive model

It is used to determine the patterns and relationships in a sample data. Data

mining tasks that belongs to descriptive model:
Clustering
Summarization
Association rules
Sequence discovery

15. Define the term summarization

The summarization of a large chunk of data contained in a web page or a

Document. Summarization = caharcterization=generalization.

16. List out the advanced database systems.

Extended-relational databases
 Object-oriented databases
Deductive databases
Spatial databases
Temporal databases
Multimedia databases
Active databases
Scientific databases
Knowledge databases

17. Define cluster analysis

Cluster analyses data objects without consulting a known class label. The class
labels are not present in the training data simply because they are not known to begin
with.

18. Classifications of Data mining systems.

According to model

Types of Data

According to functionalities

According to levels of abstraction of the knowledge mined

According to mine data regularities versus mine data irregularities

According to user interaction

According to methods of data analysis

19. What are all the challenges to data mining regarding data mining methodology and
user Interaction issues.

Mining different kinds of knowledge in databases

Interactive mining of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction
Incorporation of background knowledge
Data mining query languages and ad hoc data mining
Presentation and visualization of data mining results
Handling noisy or incomplete data
Pattern evaluation

20. What are the challenges to data mining regarding performance issues.

Efficiency and scalability of data mining algorithms

Parallel, distributed, and incremental mining algorithms
21.what are the issues relating to the diversity of database types.

Handling of relational and complex types of data

Mining information from heterogeneous databases and global information
Systems

22. What is meant by pattern?

Pattern represents knowledge if it is easily understood by humans; valid on test

data with some degree of certainty; and potentially useful, novel,or validates a hunch
about which the used was curious. Measures of pattern interestingness, either objective or
subjective, can be used to guide the discovery process.

23. How is a data warehouse different from a database?

Data warehouse is a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources, organized

under a unified schema at a single site in order to facilitate management decision-making.
Database consists of a collection of interrelated data.

24. Why we need Data transformation

Smoothing: remove noise from data

Aggregation: summarization, data cube construction

Generalization: concept hierarchy climbing

Normalization: scaled to fall within a small, specified range

- min-max normalization
- z-score normalization
- normalization by decimal scaling

Attribute/feature construction

- New attributes constructed from the given ones

25. Define Data reduction.

Data reduction Obtains reduced representation in volume but produces the same or similar
analytical results.

26. What is meant by Data Discretization?

It can be defined as Part of data reduction but with particular importance, especially for
numerical data

27. What is the discretization processes involved in data preprocessing?

It reduces the number of values for a given continuous attribute by dividing the range of the
attribute into intervals. Interval labels can then be used to replace actual data values.

28. Define Concept hierarchy.

It reduce the data by collecting and replacing low level concepts (such as numeric values for the
attribute age) by higher level concepts (such as young, middle-aged, or senior).

29. Why we need Data Mining Primitives and Languages?

Finding all the patterns autonomously in a database? Unrealistic because the patterns could be
too many but uninteresting

Data mining should be an interactive process

- User directs what to be mined

Users must be provided with a set of primitives to be used to communicate with the data mining
system. Incorporating these primitives in a data mining query language

30. What are the types of knowledge to be mined?

Characterization

Discrimination

Association

Classification/prediction

Clustering

Outlier analysis

Other data mining tasks

31. Define Data mining Query Language.

i) A DMQL can provide the ability to support ad-hoc and interactive data mining

ii) By providing a standardized language like SQL

a) Hope to achieve a similar effect like that SQL has on relational database

b) Foundation for system development and evolution

c) Facilitate information exchange, technology transfer, commercialization and wide acceptance

32. What tasks should be considered in the design GUIs based on a data mining query
language?

i) Data collection and data mining query composition

ii) Presentation of discovered patterns

iii) Hierarchy specification and manipulation

iv) Manipulation of data mining primitives

v) Interactive multilevel mining

vi) Other miscellaneous information

33. What are the types of coupling data mining system with DB/DW system?

1. No couplingflat file processing, not recommended

2. Loose coupling -Fetching data from DB/DW

3. Semi-tight couplingenhanced DM performance

a. Provide efficient implement a few data mining primitives in a DB/DW system, e.g., sorting,
indexing, aggregation, histogram analysis, multiway join, precomputation of some stat functions

4. Tight couplingA uniform information processing environment

DM is smoothly integrated into a DB/DW system, mining query is optimized based on mining
query, indexing, query processing methods, etc.

34. Why we need data preprocessing?

Data in the real world is dirty

i) Incomplete: lacking attribute values, lacking certain attributes of interest, or containing only
aggregate data

ii) Noisy: containing errors or outliers

iii) Inconsistent: containing discrepancies in codes or names

35. What is meant by Data cleaning?

Fill in missing values, smooth noisy data, identify or remove outliers, and resolve
inconsistencies.

36. Define Data integration.

Integration of multiple databases, data cubes, or file.

37. List the five primitives for specification of a data mining task.

-Task-relevant data

- Kind of knowledge to be mined

- Background knowledge

- Interestingness measures

-knowledge presentation and visualization techniques to be used for displaying the discovered
patterns

38. Descriptive vs. predictive data mining

i) Descriptive mining: describes concepts or task-relevant data sets in concise, summarative,

informative, discriminative forms

ii) Predictive mining: Based on data and analysis, constructs models for the database, and
predicts the trend and properties of unknown data

39. What is the strength of Data Characterization?

i) An efficient implementation of data generalization

ii) Computation of various kinds of measures

a) e.g., count( ), sum( ), average( ), max( )

iii) Generalization and specialization can be performed on a data cube by roll-up and drill-down

40. Give the list of limitations of Data Characterization.

a. handle only dimensions of simple nonnumeric data and measures of simple aggregated
numeric values.
b. Lack of intelligent analysis, cant tell which dimensions should be used and what levels should
the generalization reach

41. How Attribute oriented induction will be done?

c. Collect the task-relevant data( initial relation) using a relational database query

d. Perform generalization by attribute removal or attribute generalization.

e. Apply aggregation by merging identical, generalized tuples and accumulating their respective
counts.

f. Interactive presentation with users.

42. Give the basic principle of Attribute oriented induction.

- Data focusing: task-relevant data, including dimensions, and the result is the initial relation.

- Attribute-removal: remove attribute A if there is a large set of distinct values for A but (1) there
is no generalization operator on A, or (2) As higher level concepts are expressed in terms of
other attributes.

- Attribute-generalization: If there is a large set of distinct values for A, and there exists a set of
generalization operators on A, then select an operator and generalize A.

- Attribute-threshold control: typical 2-8, specified/default.

- Generalized relation threshold control: control the final relation/rule size.

43. What is the basic algorithm for Attribute oriented induction?

1. InitialRel: Query processing of task-relevant data, deriving the initial relation.

2. PreGen: Based on the analysis of the number of distinct values in each attribute, determine
generalization plan for each attribute: removal? or how high to generalize?

3. PrimeGen: Based on the PreGen plan, perform generalization to the right level to derive a
prime generalized relation, accumulating the counts.

4. Presentation: User interaction: (1) adjust levels by drilling, (2) pivoting, (3) mapping into
rules, cross tabs, visualization presentations.

44. State the difference between Characterization and OLAP.

Similarity:

g. Presentation of data summarization at multiple levels of abstraction.

h. Interactive drilling, pivoting, slicing and dicing.

Differences:

i. Automated desired level allocation.

j. Dimension relevance analysis and ranking when there are many relevant dimensions.

k. Sophisticated typing on dimensions and measures.

l. Analytical characterization: data dispersion analysis.

45. What is meant by Boxplot analysis?

m. Data is represented with a box

n. The ends of the box are at the first and third quartiles, i.e., the height of the box is IRQ

o. The median is marked by a line within the box

p. Whiskers: two lines outside the box extend to Minimum and Maximum

46. Define Histogram Analysis.

Graph displays of basic statistical class descriptions

q. Frequency histograms

i. A univariate graphical method

ii. Consists of a set of rectangles that reflect the counts or frequencies of the classes present in
the given data

47. What is meant by Quantile plot?

1. Displays all of the data (allowing the user to assess both the overall behavior and unusual
occurrences)

2. Plots quantile information

3. For a data xi data sorted in increasing order, fi indicates that approximately 100 fi% of the data
are below or equal to the value xi
48. Define Quantile-Quantile plot.

- Graphs the quantiles of one univariate distribution against the corresponding quantiles of

another

- Allows the user to view whether there is a shift in going from one distribution to another

49. Define Scatter Plot.

Provides a first look at bivariate data to see clusters of points, outliers, etc

Each pair of values is treated as a pair of coordinates and plotted as points in the plane

50. Give the definition for Loess Curve.

- Adds a smooth curve to a scatter plot in order to provide better perception of the pattern of
dependence

- Loess curve is fitted by setting two parameters: a smoothing parameter, and the degree of the
polynomials that are fitted by the regression

UNIT-IV

1. Define Association Rule Mining.

Association rule mining searches for interesting relationships among items in

a given data set.

2.What are the Applications of Association rule mining?

Basket data analysis, cross-marketing, catalog design, loss-leader analysis, clustering,

classification, etc.

3. State the rule measure for finding association.

support, s, probability that a transaction contains {X + Y + Z}

confidence, c, conditional probability that a transaction having {X + Y} also contains Z

4.What are the different way to find association?

Boolean vs. quantitative associations (Based on the types of values handled)

n buys(x, SQLServer) ^ buys(x, DMBook) buys(x, DBMiner) [0.2%, 60%]

n age(x, 30..39) ^ income(x, 42..48K) buys(x, PC) [1%, 75%]

Single dimension vs. multiple dimensional associations (see ex. Above)

Single level vs. multiple-level analysis n.

5. When we can say the association rules are interesting?

Association rules are considered interesting if they satisfy both a minimum

support threshold and a minimum confidence threshold. Users or domain experts
can set such thresholds.containing A that also contain B.

7. Define support and confidence in Association rule mining.

Support S is the percentage of transactions in D that contain AUB.

Confidence c is the percentage of transactions in D containing A that also contain
B.
Support ( A=>B)= P(AUB)
Confidence (A=>B)=P(B/A)

8. How are association rules mined from large databases?

I step: Find all frequent item sets:

II step: Generate strong association rules from frequent item sets

9. List the different classifications of Association rule mining.

Based on types of values handled in the Rule

i. Boolean association rule
ii. Quantitative association rule
Based on the dimensions of data involved
i. Single dimensional association rule
ii. Multidimensional association rule
Based on the levels of abstraction involved
i. Multilevel association rule
ii. Single level association rule
 Based on various extensions
i. Correlation analysis
ii. Mining max patterns
10. What is the purpose of Apriori Algorithm?

Apriori algorithm is an influential algorithm for mining frequent item sets for
Boolean association rules. The name of the algorithm is based on the fact that the
algorithm uses prior knowledge of frequent item set properties.

List the Methods to Improve Aprioris Efficiency.

1. Hash-based itemset counting: A k-itemset whose corresponding hashing bucket count is

below the threshold cannot be frequent
2. Transaction reduction: A transaction that does not contain any frequent k-itemset is
useless in subsequent scans
3. Partitioning: Any itemset that is potentially frequent in DB must be frequent in at least
one of the partitions of DB
4. Sampling: mining on a subset of given data, lower support threshold + a method to
determine the completeness
5. Dynamic itemset counting: add new candidate itemsets only when all of their subsets are
estimated to be frequent

11. What is the advantage of FP Tree Structure?

Completeness:

n never breaks a long pattern of any transaction

n preserves complete information for frequent pattern mining

Compactness

n reduce irrelevant informationinfrequent items are gone

n frequency descending ordering: more frequent items are more likely to be shared
n never be larger than the original database (if not count node-links and counts)

12.List the major step to mine FP Tree.

Construct conditional pattern base for each node in the FP-tree

Construct conditional FP-tree from each conditional pattern-base
Recursively mine conditional FP-trees and grow frequent patterns obtained so far
If the conditional FP-tree contains a single path, simply enumerate all the patterns

13.What is the principle of frequent pattern growth.

Pattern growth property

n Let a be a frequent itemset in DB, B be a\'s conditional pattern base, and b be an
itemset in B. Then a b is a frequent itemset in DB iff b is frequent in B.

14.Why Is Frequent Pattern Growth Fast?

n FP-growth is an order of magnitude faster than Apriori, and is also faster than tree-
projection
n No candidate generation, no candidate test
n Use compact data structure
n Eliminate repeated database scan
n Basic operation is counting and FP-tree building

15.Define Multiple Level Association Rule.

Items often form hierarchy.

Items at the lower level are expected to have lower support.
Rules regarding itemsets at appropriate levels could be quite useful.
Transaction database can be encoded based on dimensions and levels
We can explore shared multi-level mining

16.What do you meant by Reduced Support?

It reduced minimum support at lower levels

There are 4 search strategies:
a) Level-by-level independent
b) Level-cross filtering by k-itemset
 c) Level-cross filtering by single item
d) Controlled level-cross filtering by single item

17. Define Quantitative association rules

Quantitative attributes are dynamically discretized into binsbased on the distribution of

the data.
. Give the two-step mining of spatial association.
Step 1: rough spatial computation (as a filter)
Using MBR or R-tree for rough estimation.
Step2: Detailed spatial algorithm (as refinement)
Apply only to those objects which have passed the rough spatial association test (no less
than min_support)

18. Define Supervised learning (classification)

a. Supervision: The training data (observations, measurements, etc.) are accompanied by

labels indicating the class of the observations
b. New data is classified based on the training set

19.What is meant by Unsupervised learning (clustering)

a. The class labels of training data is unknown

b. Given a set of measurements, observations, etc. with the aim of establishing the
existence of classes or clusters in the data

20. Define anti-monotone property.

If a set cannot pass a test, all of its supersets will fail the same test as well.

21. How to generate association rules from frequent item sets?

Association rules can be generated as followsFor each frequent item set1, generate all non empty
subsets of 1.For every non empty subsets s of 1, output the rule S=>(1-s)if Support
count(1)=min_conf,Support_count(s)Where min_conf is the minimum confidence threshold.

22. Give few techniques to improve the efficiency of Apriori algorithm.

 Hash based technique
Transaction Reduction
Portioning
Sampling
Dynamic item counting

23. What are the things suffering the performance of Apriori candidate
generation technique.

Need to generate a huge number of candidate sets

Need to repeatedly scan the scan the database and check a large set of
candidates by pattern matching

24. Describe the method of generating frequent item sets without candidate
generation.
Frequent-pattern growth(or FP Growth) adopts divide-and-conquer
strategy.
Steps:
Compress the database representing frequent items into a frequent pattern tree
or FP tree
Divide the compressed database into a set of conditional database
Mine each conditional database separately

25. Define Iceberg query.

It computes an aggregate function over an attribute or set of attributes in

order to find aggregate values above some specified threshold.
Given relation R with attributes a1,a2,..,an and b, and an aggregate function,
agg_f, an iceberg query is the form
Select R.a1,R.a2,..R.an,agg_f(R,b)
From relation R
Group by R.a1,R.a2,.,R.an
Having agg_f(R.b)>=threshold

26. Mention few approaches to mining Multilevel Association Rules

Uniform minimum support for all levels(or uniform support)

Using reduced minimum support at lower levels(or reduced support)
Level-by-level independent
Level-cross filtering by single item
Level-cross filtering by k-item set

27. What are multidimensional association rules?

Association rules that involve two or more dimensions or predicates

Interdimension association rule: Multidimensional association rule with no

repeated predicate or dimension
Hybrid-dimension association rule: Multidimensional association rule with
multiple occurrences of some predicates or dimensions.

28. Define constraint-Based Association Mining.

Mining is performed under the guidance of various kinds of constraints

provided by the user.

The constraints include the following

Knowledge type constraints
Data constraints
Dimension/level constraints
Interestingness constraints
Rule constraints.

29. Define the concept of classification.

Two step process

A model is built describing a predefined set of data classes or concepts.
The model is constructed by analyzing database tuples described by
attributes.
The model is used for classification.

30. What is Decision tree?

A decision tree is a flow chart like tree structures, where each internal
node denotes a test on an attribute, each branch represents an outcome of the test,
and leaf nodes represent classes or class distributions. The top most in a tree is the
root node.

31. What is Attribute Selection Measure?

The information Gain measure is used to select the test attribute at each node
in the decision tree. Such a measure is referred to as an attribute selection measure
or a measure of the goodness of split.

32. Describe Tree pruning methods.

When a decision tree is built, many of the branches will reflect anomalies in
the training data due to noise or outlier. Tree pruning methods address this
problem of over fitting the data.
Approaches:
Pre pruning
Post pruning

33. Define Pre Pruning

A tree is pruned by halting its construction early. Upon halting, the node
becomes a leaf. The leaf may hold the most frequent class among the subset
samples.

34. Define Post Pruning.

Post pruning removes branches from a Fully grown tree. A tree node is
pruned by removing its branches.
Eg: Cost Complexity Algorithm

35. What is meant by Pattern?

Pattern represents the knowledge.

36. Define the concept of prediction.

Prediction can be viewed as the construction and use of a model to assess the
class of an unlabeled sample or to assess the value or value ranges of an attribute
that a given sample is likely to have.

37. What is the difference between linear regression and non linear regression?

Linear regression is the simplest form of regression in which data are modeled using a
straight line whereas nonlinear regression doesnt have linear reation between reponse and
predictor variables.

38. What is classifier Accuracy?

Classifier Accuracy is an individual program,depends on the number of samplescorrectly

classified and is evaluated by the fopmula

Ai=t*100/n
Where t is the member of sambles cases correctly classified,and n is the total number of sample
cases.

39.What are the measures of classifier accuracy?

- Sensitivity
 -Specificity
-Precision

40.What are the advantages and disadvantages of roughest approaches?

Advantages
-Reduce all redundant objects and attributes.
-Creates models of the most representative object in particular classes of decisions
Disadvantages
-Involves sharp cutoffs for continuous attributes.

41. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Fuzzy set approaches?

Advantages
-Allows the use of vague linguistic terms in the rules
-Handles blurring,noise and bacground variation in aa more robust way.
-Shape Descriptors achive much higher precision.
-Provides tools for improved image interpretation and understanding
Disadvantages
-Implementation maynot be as straightforward.
-Difficult to estimate membership function.

42. What are the five parts of genetic algorithm computational model?

-A starting set of individualsP

-Crossover Technique to combine two parents to create offspring
-Mutation:Randomly change an individual
-Fitness:Determine the best individuals.
-Algorithm which approves the crossover and mutation technique to P iteratively using
the fitness function to determine the best individuals in P to keep.

43. What are the three methods for association rule based classification.

-ARCS-Association rule clustering system

-Association classification
-CAEP-Classification by Aggregating emerging Patterns.

UNIT V

1.Define Clustering?
Clustering is a process of grouping the physical or conceptual data object into
clusters.

2. What do you mean by Cluster Analysis?

A cluster analysis is the process of analyzing the various clusters to organize the
different objects into meaningful and descriptive objects.

3. What are the fields in which clustering techniques are used?

Clustering is used in biology to develop new plants and animal

taxonomies.
Clustering is used in business to enable marketers to develop new
distinct groups of their customers and characterize the customer group on basis
of purchasing.
Clustering is used in the identification of groups of automobiles
Insurance policy customer.
Clustering is used in the identification of groups of house in a city on
the basis of house type, their cost and geographical location.
Clustering is used to classify the document on the web for information
discovery.

4.What are the requirements of cluster analysis?

The basic requirements of cluster analysis are

Dealing with different types of attributes.
Dealing with noisy data.
Constraints on clustering.
Dealing with arbitrary shapes.
High dimensionality
Ordering of input data
Interpretability and usability
Determining input parameter and
Scalability

5.What are the different types of data used for cluster analysis?

The different types of data used for cluster analysis are interval scaled, binary,
nominal, ordinal and ratio scaled data.

6. What are interval scaled variables?

Interval scaled variables are continuous measurements of linear scale.

For example, height and weight, weather temperature or coordinates for any cluster.
These measurements can be calculated using Euclidean distance or Minkowski distance.

7. Define Binary variables? And what are the two types of binary variables?

Binary variables are understood by two states 0 and 1, when state is 0, variable is
absent and when state is 1, variable is present. There are two types of binary variables,
symmetric and asymmetric binary variables. Symmetric variables are those variables that
have same state values and weights. Asymmetric variables are those variables that have
not same state values and weights.

8. Define nominal, ordinal and ratio scaled variables?

A nominal variable is a generalization of the binary variable. Nominal variable

has more than two states, For example, a nominal variable, color consists of four states,
red, green, yellow, or black. In Nominal variables the total number of states is N and it is
denoted by letters, symbols or integers.
An ordinal variable also has more than two states but all these states are ordered
in a meaningful sequence.
A ratio scaled variable makes positive measurements on a non-linear scale, such
as exponential scale, using the formula AeBt or Ae-BtWhere A and B are constants.

9. What do u mean by partitioning method?

In partitioning method a partitioning algorithm arranges all the objects into

various partitions, where the total number of partitions is less than the total number of
objects. Here each partition represents a cluster. The two types of partitioning method are
k-means and k-medoids.

10. Define CLARA and CLARANS?

Clustering in LARge Applications is called as CLARA. The efficiency of

CLARA depends upon the size of the representative data set. CLARA does not work
properly if any representative data set from the selected representative data sets does not
find best k-medoids.
To recover this drawback a new algorithm, Clustering Large Applications based
upon RANdomized search (CLARANS) is introduced. The CLARANS works like
CLARA, the only difference between CLARA and CLARANS is the clustering process
that is done after selecting the representative data sets.

11. What is Hierarchical method?

Hierarchical method groups all the objects into a tree of clusters that are arranged
in a hierarchical order. This method works on bottom-up or top-down approaches.

12. Differentiate Agglomerative and Divisive Hierarchical Clustering?

Agglomerative Hierarchical clustering method works on the bottom-up approach.

In Agglomerative hierarchical method, each object creates its own clusters. The single
Clusters are merged to make larger clusters and the process of merging continues until all
the singular clusters are merged into one big cluster that consists of all the objects.
Divisive Hierarchical clustering method works on the top-down approach. In this
method all the objects are arranged within a big singular cluster and the large cluster is
continuously divided into smaller clusters until each cluster has a single object.

13. What is CURE?

Clustering Using Representatives is called as CURE. The clustering algorithms

generally work on spherical and similar size clusters. CURE overcomes the problem of
spherical and similar size cluster and is more robust with respect to outliers.

14. Define Chameleon method?

Chameleon is another hierarchical clustering method that uses dynamic modeling.

Chameleon is introduced to recover the drawbacks of CURE method. In this method two
clusters are merged, if the interconnectivity between two clusters is greater than the
interconnectivity between the objects within a cluster.

15. Define Density based method?

Density based method deals with arbitrary shaped clusters. In density-based

method, clusters are formed on the basis of the region where the density of the objects is
high.

16. What is a DBSCAN?

Density Based Spatial Clustering of Application Noise is called as DBSCAN.

DBSCAN is a density based clustering method that converts the high-density objects
regions into clusters with arbitrary shapes and sizes. DBSCAN defines the cluster as a
maximal set of density connected points.

17. What do you mean by Grid Based Method?

In this method objects are represented by the multi resolution grid data structure.
All the objects are quantized into a finite number of cells and the collection of cells build
the grid structure of objects. The clustering operations are performed on that grid
structure. This method is widely used because its processing time is very fast and that is
independent of number of objects.
18. What is a STING?

Statistical Information Grid is called as STING; it is a grid based multi resolution

clustering method. In STING method, all the objects are contained into rectangular cells,
these cells are kept into various levels of resolutions and these levels are arranged in a
hierarchical structure.

19. Define Wave Cluster?

It is a grid based multi resolution clustering method. In this method all the objects
are represented by a multidimensional grid structure and a wavelet transformation is
applied for finding the dense region. Each grid cell contains the information of the group
of objects that map into a cell. A wavelet transformation is a process of signaling that
produces the signal of various frequency sub bands.

20. What is Model based method?

For optimizing a fit between a given data set and a mathematical model based
methods are used. This method uses an assumption that the data are distributed by
probability distributions. There are two basic approaches in this method that are
1. Statistical Approach
2. Neural Network Approach.

21. What is the use of Regression?

Regression can be used to solve the classification problems but it can also be used
for applications such as forecasting. Regression can be performed using many different
types of techniques; in actually regression takes a set of data and fits the data to a
formula.

22. What are the reasons for not using the linear regression model to estimate the
output data?

There are many reasons for that, One is that the data do not fit a linear model, It is
possible however that the data generally do actually represent a linear model, but the
linear model generated is poor because noise or outliers exist in the data.
Noise is erroneous data and outliers are data values that are exceptions to the usual and
expected data.

23. What are the two approaches used by regression to perform classification?
Regression can be used to perform classification using the following approaches
1. Division: The data are divided into regions based on class.
2. Prediction: Formulas are generated to predict the output class value.
24. What do u mean by logistic regression?

Instead of fitting a data into a straight line logistic regression uses a logistic curve.
The formula for the univariate logistic curve is
P= e (C0+C1X1)
1+e (C0+C1X1)
The logistic curve gives a value between 0 and 1 so it can be interpreted as the
probability of class membership.

25. What is Time Series Analysis?

A time series is a set of attribute values over a period of time. Time Series
Analysis may be viewed as finding patterns in the data and predicting future values.

26. What are the various detected patterns?

Detected patterns may include:

Trends : It may be viewed as systematic non-repetitive changes to the values over
time.
Cycles : The observed behavior is cyclic.
Seasonal : The detected patterns may be based on time of year or month or day.
Outliers : To assist in pattern detection , techniques may be needed to remove or
reduce the impact of outliers.

27. What is Smoothing?

Smoothing is an approach that is used to remove the nonsystematic behaviors

found in time series. It usually takes the form of finding moving averages of attribute
values. It is used to filter out noise and outliers.

28. Give the formula for Pearsons r

One standard formula to measure correlation is the correlation coefficient r,

sometimes called Pearsons r. Given two time series, X and Y with means X and Y,
each with n elements, the formula for r is
S (xi X) (yi Y)
(S (xi X)2 S(yi Y)2)1/2

29. What is Auto regression?

Auto regression is a method of predicting a future time series value by looking at

previous values. Given a time series X = (x1,x2,.xn) a future value, x n+1, can be
found
using
x n+1 = x + j nx n + j n-1x n-1 ++ e n+1
Here e n+1 represents a random error, at time n+1.In addition, each element in the time
series can be viewed as a combination of a random error and a linear combination ofprevious
values.
30.What are the classifications of tools for data mining?

Commercial Tools
Public domain Tools
Research prototypes

31.What are commercial tools?

Commercial tools can be defined as the following products and usually are
associated with the consulting activity by the same company:
1. Intelligent Miner from IBM
2. SAS System from SAS Institute
3. Thought from Right Information Systems. Etc

32. What are Public domain Tools?

Public domain Tools are largely freeware with just registration fees:
Brute from University of Washington. MC++ from Stanford university, Stanford,
California.

33. What are Research prototypes?

Some of the research products may find their way into commercial
market: DB Miner from Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Mining Kernel
System from University of Ulster, North Ireland.

34.What is the difference between generic single-task tools and generic multi-task
tools?

Generic single-task tools generally use neural networks or decision trees.

They cover only the data mining part and require extensive pre-processing and
postprocessing
steps.
Generic multi-task tools offer modules for pre-processing and postprocessing
steps and also offer a broad selection of several popular data mining
algorithms as clustering.

35. What are the areas in which data warehouses are used in present and in future?

The potential subject areas in which data ware houses may be developed at
present and also in future are
1.Census data:
The registrar general and census commissioner of India decennially
compiles information of all individuals, villages, population groups, etc. This information
is wide ranging such as the individual slip. A compilation of information of individual
households, of which a database of 5%sample is maintained for analysis. A data
warehouse can be built from this database upon which OLAP techniques can be applied,
Data mining also can be performed for analysis and knowledge discovery

36.Prices of Essential Commodities

The ministry of food and civil supplies, Government of India complies

daily data for about 300 observation centers in the entire country on the prices of
essential commodities such as rice, edible oil etc, A data warehouse can be built
for this data and OLAP techniques can be applied for its analysis

37. What are the other areas for Data warehousing and data mining?

Agriculture
Rural development
Health
Planning
Education
Commerce and Trade

38. Specify some of the sectors in which data warehousing and data mining are used?

Tourism
Program Implementation
Revenue
Economic Affairs
Audit and Accounts

39. Describe the use of DBMiner.

Used to perform data mining functions, including characterization,

association, classification, prediction and clustering.

40. Applications of DBMiner.

The DBMiner system can be used as a general-purpose online analytical

mining system for both OLAP and data mining in relational database and
datawarehouses.
Used in medium to large relational databases with fast response time.

41. Give some data mining tools.

DBMiner
GeoMiner
Multimedia miner
WeblogMiner

42. Mention some of the application areas of data mining

DNA analysis
Financial data analysis
Retail Industry
Telecommunication industry
Market analysis
Banking industry and Health care analysis.

43. Differentiate data query and knowledge query

A data query finds concrete data stored in a database and corresponds to a

basic retrieval statement in a database system.
A knowledge query finds rules, patterns and other kinds of knowledge in a
database and corresponds to querying database knowledge including
deduction rules, integrity constraints, generalized rules, frequent patterns and
other regularities.

44.Differentiate direct query answering and intelligent query answering.

Direct query answering means that a query answers by returning exactly what
is being asked.
Intelligent query answering consists of analyzing the intent of query and
providing generalized, neighborhood, or associated information relevant to the
query.