Data Mining Versus Knowledge Discovery in

Databases
Dr. Kishori Lal Bansal1, Satish Sood2
1
Associate Professor, Dept. Of Computer Science, HP University, Summer Hill, Shimla HP
2
Research Scholar, Dept. Of Computer Science, HP University, Summer Hill, Shimla HP
satishdsala@gmail.com
Abstract— The terms knowledge discovery in databases (KDD)
and data mining are often used interchangeably. In fact, there
have been many other names given to this process of discovering
useful (hidden) patterns in data knowledge extraction,
information discovery, exploratory data analysis, information
harvesting, and unsupervised pattern recognition. Over the last
few years KDD has been used to refer to a process consisting of
many steps, while data mining is only one of these steps. This
paper is focused on the data mining and knowledge discovery in
databases.
Keywords— Data Mining; Knowledge Discovery; Databases
I. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is the process of
finding useful information and patterns in data. Data mining is
the use of algorithms to extract the information and patterns
derived by the KDD process. The KDD process is often said
to be nontrivial; however, we take the larger view that KDD is
an all-encompassing concept. A traditional SQL database
query can be viewed as the data mining part of a KDD
process. Indeed, this may be viewed as somewhat simple and
trivial. However, this was not the case 30 years ago. If we
were to advance 30 years into the future, we might find that
processes thought of today as nontrivial and complex will be
viewed as equally simple. KDD is the process that involves
many different steps. The input to this process is the data, and
the output is the useful information desired by the users.
However, the objective may be unclear or inexact. The
process itself is interactive and may require much elapsed
time. To ensure the usefulness and accuracy of the results of
the process, interaction throughout the process with both
domain experts and technical experts might be needed.
II. KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY PROCESS STEPS
The KDD process consists of the following five steps.
 Selection: The data needed for the data mining process
may be obtained from many different and heterogeneous
data sources. This first step obtains the data from various
databases, files, and nonelectronic sources.
 Pre-processing: The data to be used by the process may
have incorrect or missing data. There may be anomalous
data from multiple sources involving different data types
and metrics. There may be many different activities
performed at this time. Erroneous data may be corrected
or removed, whereas missing data must be supplied or
predicted often using the data mining tools.
 Transformation: Data from different sources must be
converted into a common format for processing. Some
data may be encoded or transformed into more usable
formats. Data reduction may be used to reduce the
number of possible data values being considered.
 Data Mining: Based o the data mining task being
performed, this step applies algorithms to the transformed
data to generate the desired results.
 Interpretation/evaluation: How the data mining results
are presented to the users is extremely important because
the usefulness of the results is dependent on it. Various
visualization and GUI strategies are used at this last step.
Transformation techniques are used to make the data easier to
mine and more useful, and to provide more meaningful
results. The actual distribution of the data may be modified to
facilitate use by techniques that require specific types of data
distributions. Some attribute values may be combined to
provide new values, thus reducing the complexity of the data.
For example, current date and birth date could be replaced by
age. One attribute could be substituted for another. An
example would be replacing a sequence of actual attribute
values with the differences between consecutive values. Real
valued attributes may be more easily handled by partitioning
the values into ranges and using these discrete range values.
Some data values may actually be removed. Outliers, extreme
values that occur infrequently, may actually be removed. The
data may be transformed by applying a function to the values.
A common transformation function is to use the log of the
value rather than the value itself. These techniques make the
mining task easier by reducing the dimensionality (number of
attributes) or by reducing the variability of the data values.
The removal of outliers can actually improve the quality of the
results. As with all steps in the KDD process, however, care
must be used in performing transformation. If used
incorrectly, the transformation could actually change the data
such that the results of the data mining step are inaccurate.
III. VISUALIZATION
Visualization refers to the visual presentation of data. The old
expression “a picture is worth a thousand words” certainly is
true when examining the structure of data. For example, a line
graph that shows the distribution of a data variable is easier to
understand and perhaps more informative than the formula for
the corresponding distribution. The use of visualization
techniques allows users to summarize, extract, and grasp more
complex results than more mathematical or text type
description of the results. Visualization techniques include:
 Graphical: Traditional graph structures including bar
charts, pie charts, histograms, and line graphs may be
used.
 Geometric: Geometric techniques include the box plot
and scatter diagrams techniques.
 Icon-based: Using figures, colors, or other icons can
improve the presentation techniques.
 Pixel-based: With these techniques each data value is
shown as a uniquely colored pixel.
 Hierarchical: These techniques hierarchically divide the
display area (screen) into regions based on data values.
 Hybrid: The proceeding approaches can be combined into
one display.
Any of these approaches may be two-dimensional or three-
dimensional. Visualization tools can be used to summarize
data as a data mining technique itself. In addition, must be able to use it. KDD is not a new technique but rather
visualization can be used to show the complex results of data a multi-disciplinary field of research; machine learning,
mining tasks. statistics, database technology, expert systems, and data
visualization all make a contribution.

IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF DATA MINING VI. REFERENCES

The current evolution of data mining functions and products is [1] Fayyad U., Piatetsky-Shapiro G., and Smyth P. “Knowledge Discovery
and Data Minning: Towards a Unifying Framework”, Proc, 2nd Int. Conf. on
the result of years of influence from many disciplines, Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Portland, OR, 1996, pp. 82-88.
including databases, information retrieval, statistics, [2]Malik Shahzad Kaleem Awan, Mian Muhammad Awais, “Data Mining-
algorithms, and machine learning. Another computer science Redefining the Boundaries”, IEEE Computer Society.
area that has had a major impact on the KDD process is [3] Berry, M. and G. Linoff (2002) Mastering Data Mining, New York: John
Wiley & Sons.
multimedia and graphics. A major goal of KDD is to be able [4]Hand, D., H. Mannila, and P. Smyth (2000) Principles of Data Mining,
to describe the results of the KDD process in a meaningful Boston: MIT Press.
manner. Because many different results are often produced, [5]Pieter Adriaans, Dolf Zantige Data Mining, Pearson Education.
this is a nontrivial problem. Visualization techniques often
involve sophisticated multimedia and graphics presentations.
In addition, data mining techniques can be applied to
multimedia applications. Artificial intelligence, information
retrieval, databases, and statistics leading to the current view
of data mining. These different historical influences, which
have led to the development of the total data mining areas,
have given rise to different views of what data mining
functions actually are:

 Induction: is used to proceed from very specific

knowledge to more general information. This type of
technique is often found in artificial intelligence
applications.
 Because the primary objective of data mining is to
describe some characteristics of a set of data by a general
model, this approach can be viewed as type of
compression. Here the detailed data within the database
are abstracted and compressed to a smaller description of
the data characteristics that are found in the model.
 The data mining process itself can be viewed as a type of
querying the underlying database. Indeed, an ongoing
direction of data mining research is how to define a data
mining query and whether a query language (like SQL)
can be developed to capture the many different types of
data mining queries.
 Describing a large database can be viewed as using
approximation to help uncover hidden information about
the data.
 When dealing with large databases, the impact of size and
efficiency of developing an abstract model can be thought
of as a type of search problem.

V. CONCLUSION
The term KDD be employed to describe the whole process
of extraction of knowledge from data. In this context,
knowledge means relationships and patterns between data
elements. The data mining should be used exclusively for the
discovery stage of the KDD process. A more or less official
definition of KDD is: ‘the non-trivial extraction of implicit,
previously unknown and potentially useful knowledge from
data.’ So the knowledge must be new, not obvious, and one