Data Mining works with the operation of some of the most influential algorithms. It is very important to know the steps that involve in the working process of those algorithms. The following are the top five algorithms used to construct and support data mining.
C4.5 is employed for the purpose of constructing a classifier which has to be in the formation of a decision tree. In order to represent the data that is required to be classified, the classifier is used as a tool which also predicts the class of the new data. Attributes play an important role in the collective working process of the classifier. Attributes are nothing but the individual variables of a dataset such as blood pressure, VO2max, pulse, age, family history etc. The vital aspects of C4.5 algorithm is, it uses information gain and single-pass pruning process.
K-means is the second most important algorithm in data mining. The end purpose of the k-means algorithm is to explore a dataset by creating cluster analysis. Basically, with the help of a set of objects, k-means creates k-groups in order to make the members of a group more similar. As opposed to non-group members, cluster analysis creates group members that are more similar to the deployment of family algorithms designed for that purpose. Depending upon the types of data, k-means has the plethora of variations to use for the purpose of optimization. Some of the implementations used for k-means clustering are Weka, MATLAB, SAS, SciPy, R, Apache Mahout and Julia. There are some very compelling limitations that are prone to its sensitivity and the initial choice of centroids. For this purpose, it has to be remembered that it is designed to operate on continuous data. However performing some discrete data can provide space to work on discrete data.
To classify data into 2 classes by the employment of hyperplane, an algorithm is used called Support Vector Machine (SVM). Though the performance of support vector machine is similar to the task done in C4.5, the technique of decision trees system is not used in SVM. Margins are something that is used quite often in association with SVM. It is defined as the parameter used to measure the distance between the hyperplane and the two closest data points. Few of the popular implementations of SVM are MATLAB, scikit-learn and libsvm. Prior to classifying new data, it is extremely important to know whether the dataset is supervised or unsupervised. SVM is an entirely supervised algorithm since a dataset is used to first teach the SVM about the classes. SVM is an exception to No Free Lunch theorem. Therefore SVM and C4.5 are generally the two best classifiers in all cases.
If we want to handle a large number of associations in data mining, the Apriori algorithm can be sought. Before its application on a large number of applications, it learns association rules. The necessity for Apriori algorithm to learn association rules is to understand the concepts of correlations and relations among variables in a database. The Apriori algorithm requires the definition of three important aspects associated with a dataset such as size, support and confidence. The three step approach of the algorithm includes Join, Prune, and Repeat.
Yet another clustering system is used in the algorithm called expectation-maximization (EM). The clustering system used in this algorithm is similar to that of k-means but for knowledge discovery. The expectation-maximization algorithm perfectly balances the iteration and optimization of observed data and unobserved variables. Actually, it iterates and optimizes the likelihood of seeing observed data whereas on the other side it estimates the parameters of a statistical model. A statistical model is specifically used for the generation of observed data. In other words, it defines the model that describes the process involved in the formation of observed data.