IS2160 Data Mining

INFSCI 2160
Data Mining

Fall 2008 ( 2091 )

Instructor: Dr. Stephen Hirtle

Office: 2B01 IS Building; Office Phone: 412-624-9434; Email: hirtle@pitt.edu; Office Hours: Monday 1:30-3:00pm or by appointment

GSA: to be announced

Class Meets: Wed, 12:00-2:50pm, Room: IS 405

Prerequisite: IS 2020 or permission of instructor

All available information about this course may be found at: http://courseweb.pitt.edu

Overview. Data mining has become an increasingly popular statistical method for knowledge discovery. With roots in classical scaling techniques and artificial intelligence, data mining provides a set of tools for the discovery and visualization of patterns in data warehouses. Data mining has been used in diverse applications from the discovery of quasars to the analysis of web logs. This course will look at various data mining tools to see how they work and what kinds of knowledge can be discovered. In addition, we will try to separate out the hype which exists in some popular accounts of data mining from the reality of the methods.

The course will provide an important foundation for further study in diverse areas, such as information retrieval, cognitive science, and marketing. The techniques discussed are also the foundation of many modern data mining techniques. The course will count as one of the two required foundations courses in the MSIS program.

Please note that a certain degree of mathematical and statistical fluency is required. It will be assumed that students have completed IS 2020, or the equivalent. If you have not taken this course, then please contact the instructor, via email, for permission to take the course.

Email. All email about the class should include "INFSCI 2160" in the subject line to be read and processed by the instructor and/or GSA.

Materials. The primary text for the term is

Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques (Second Edition) Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank Morgan Kaufmann June 2005 ISBN 0-12-088407-0 http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/book.html Weka maching learning software available at no charge from http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/index.html

Additional links related to the class can be found at the following sites:

http://www.kdnuggets.com/, one of the leading sites on data mining managed and operated by Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro,
Classification Society of North America, includes bibliographies, newsletters, and software on cluster analysis.

Evaluation. Evaluation will consist of weekly homework assignments, a midterm exam and a final exam. There will 11 homework assignments over the course of the term, each counting 10 points. Each homework will be posted one week before it is due. The lowest homework grade will be dropped, resulting a possible of 100 points for homework. Late homework will lose 1 point each day that it is late. No homework will be accepted more than 7 days after the due date. You may work on with others on the homework, but the final work should be your own and in your own words.

The midterm and final exam will each be worth 100 points. Each exam will be 90 minutes long and will be held in-class. The exams will be open-book/open-notes and the final will be non-cumulative.

Special circumstances. If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accomodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Office of Disability Resources and Sevices, 216 William Pitt Union, (412-648-7890/TTY:412-383-7355) as early as possible in the term. DRS will verify your disability and determine reasonable accomodations for this course. In addition, you should be aware that my office is up a short flight of stairs. If this problematic, I am happy to arrange a meeting in an accessible location at any time.

Last Update: June 16, 2008