Are you a data mining analyst, who spends up to 80% of your time assuring data quality, then preparing that data for developing and deploying predictive models? And do you find lots of literature on data mining theory and concepts, but when it comes to practical advice on developing good mining views find little "how to" information? And are you, like most analysts, preparing the data in SAS?
This book is intended to fill this gap as your source of practical recipes. It introduces a framework for the process of data preparation for data mining, and presents the detailed implementation of each step in SAS. In addition, business applications of data mining modeling require you to deal with a large number of variables, typically hundreds if not thousands. Therefore, the book devotes several chapters to the methods of data transformation and variable selection.

It is easy to write books that address broad topics and ideas leaving the reader with the question 'Yes, but how?' By combining a comprehensive guide to data preparation for data mining along with specific examples in SAS, Mamdouh's book is a rare find'"a blend of theory and the practical at the same time. As anyone who has mined data will confess, 80% of the problem is in data preparation; Mamdouh addresses this difficult subject with strong practical techniques and methods.

If you are working on an SAS data mining project, this book is a must! If you are working on any data mining project, the techniques and methods will be a guiding light! --Frank Byrum, Chief Scientist, CorMine Intelligent Data, LLC

It is easy to write books that address broad topics and ideas leaving the reader with the question â€�“Yes, but how?” By combining a comprehensive guide to data preparation for data mining along with specific examples in SAS, Mamdouh's book is a rare find — a blend of theory and the practical at the same time. As anyone who has mined data will confess, 80% of the problem is in data preparation; Mamdouh addresses this difficult subject with strong practical techniques and methods.

If you are working on an SAS data mining project, this book is a must! If you are working on any data mining project, the techniques and methods will be a guiding light! --Frank Byrum, Chief Scientist, CorMine Intelligent Data, LLC

Mamdouh Refaat is a data mining and business analytics consultant advising major organizations in North America and Europe. He has held several positions in consulting organizations and software vendors, including the director of consulting services at ANGOSS Software Corporation, a global data mining software and service provider. During his career, Mamdouh has managed numerous data mining consulting projects in marketing, CRM, and credit risk for Fortune 500 organizations in North America and Europe. In addition, he has delivered over 50 professional training courses in data mining and business analytics. Mamdouh holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from the University of Leeds.

During his career, Mamdouh has managed numerous data mining consulting projects in marketing, CRM, and credit risk for Fortune 500 organizations in North America and Europe. In addition, he has delivered over 50 professional training courses in data mining and business analytics.

Mamdouh holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from the University of Leeds.

Contents

1 Introduction

2 Tasks and Data Flow

3 Review of Data Mining Modeling Techniques

4 SAS Macros: A Quick Start

5 Data Acquisition and Integration

6 Integrity Checks

8 Sampling and Partitioning

9 Data Transformations

10 Binning and Reduction of Cardinality

11 Treatment of Missing Values

12 Predictive Power and Variable Reduction I

13 Analysis of Nominal and Ordinal Variables

14 Analysis of Continuous Variables

15 Principal Component Analysis (PCA) 2

16 Factor Analysis

17 Predictive Power and Variable Reduction II

18 Putting it All Together

A Listing of SAS Macros