Following Neil’s discussion on Data Mining Process and Predictive Analytics (part I of this presentation), he nows discusses the Data Extraction, Transformation and Loading, a critical step on the data mining process.
He starts with an amusing quote about data: “Raw data is horrible, is messy, is noisy; it is a bit like other people’s children”
In this Part II (out of three), Neil discusses how to reduce the noise on the data by asking questions like: what is it that we need out of all this data? What are the key events that we need to understand from our data? This process is essentially a data reduction exercise.
Neil also goes over a case study on customer segmentation where he explains two different ways of applying behavioral segmentation strategies:
- Deterministic Segmentation: we decide the rules based on which visitors will be segmented.
- Discovery Based Segmentation: the data do the talking; we try to find the patterns, the associations, the correlations that we may not have thought about.
Watch Data Discovery: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know by Neil Mason – Part I
Watch Data Discovery: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know by Neil Mason – Part III
Neil Mason
Neil Mason joined Foviance as part of an acquisition of Applied Insights whom he was director and co-founder. With 25 years of in-depth industry experience in marketing analytics and strategy, Neil leads Foviance’s analytical consulting practice. This delivers an enhanced digital marketing analytics capability to both Foviance’s and Applied Insights existing and future clients.
Neil is one of the world’s leading analytics guru’s and he has a big reputation. He holds an MBA from Kingston Business School, a Diploma in Business and Economic Forecasting and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association, the global industry body for digital analytics professionals.