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IT6702 - DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING
UNIT-1 DATA WAREHOUSING

Part – A
1. What is data warehouse? (May/June 2010)
 A data warehouse is a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources organized
under a unified schema at a single site to facilitate management decision making.
 A data warehouse is a subject-oriented, time-variant and nonvolatile collection of
data in support of management’s decision-making process.
2. What are the uses of multifeature cubes? (Nov/Dec 2007)
Multifeature cubes, which compute complex queries involving multiple dependent
aggregates at multiple granularity. These cubes are very useful in practice. Many complex
data mining queries can be answered by multifeature cubes without any significant increase
in computational cost, in comparison to cube computation for simple queries with standard
data cubes.
3. What is Data mart? (May/June 2013)
Data mart is a data store that is subsidiary to a data ware house of integrated data.
The data mart is directed at a partition of data that is created for the use of a dedicated group
of users.
4. What is data warehouse metadata? (Apr/May 2008)
Metadata are data about data. When used in a data warehouse, metadata are the data
that define warehouse objects. Metadata are created for the data names and definitions of
the given warehouse. Additional metadata are created and captured for time stamping any
extracted data, the source of the extracted data, and missing fields that have been added by
data cleaning or integration processes.
5. In the context of data warehousing what is data transformation? (May/June 2009)
In data transformation, the data are transformed or consolidated into forms appropriate
for mining. Data transformation can involve the following:
 Smoothing
 Aggregation
 Generalization
 Normalization
 Attribute construction
6. List the characteristics of a data warehouse. (Nov/Dec 2009)
There are four key characteristics which separate the data warehouse from other
major operational systems:
o Subject Orientation: Data organized by subject
o Integration: Consistency of defining parameters
o Non-volatility: Stable data storage medium
o Time-variance: Timeliness of data and access terms
7. What are the various sources for data warehouse? (Nov/Dec 2009)
 Handling of relational and complex types of data: Because relational databases and
data warehouses are widely used, the development of efficient and effective data
mining systems for such data is important.
 Mining information from heterogeneous databases and global information
systems: Local- and wide-area computer networks (such as the Internet) connect
many sources of data, forming huge, distributed, and heterogeneous databases.
8. What is bitmap indexing? (Nov/Dec 2009)
The bitmap indexing method is popular in OLAP products because it allows quick
searching in data cubes. The bitmap index is an alternative representation of the record ID
(RID) list.
9. Differentiate fact table and dimension table. (May/June 2010)
 Fact table contains the name of facts (or) measures as well as keys to each of the
related dimensional tables.
 A dimension table is used for describing the dimension. (e.g.) A dimension table for
item may contain the attributes item_ name, brand and type.
10. Briefly discuss the schemas for multidimensional databases. (May/June 2010)
 Stars schema: The most common modeling paradigm is the star schema, in which
the data warehouse contains (1) a large central table (fact table) containing the bulk

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UNIT-1 DATA WAREHOUSING

of the data, with no redundancy, and (2) a set of smaller attendant tables (dimension
tables), one for each dimension.
 Snowflakes schema: The snowflake schema is a variant of the star schema model,
where some dimension tables are normalized, thereby further splitting the data into
additional tables. The resulting schema graph forms a shape similar to a snowflake.
 Fact Constellations: Sophisticated applications may require multiple fact tables to
share dimension tables. This kind of schema can be viewed as a collection of stars,
and hence is called a galaxy schema or a fact constellation.
11. How is a data warehouse different from a database? How are they similar?
(Nov/Dec 2007, Nov/Dec 2010, May/June 2012)
Data warehouse is a repository of multiple heterogeneous data sources, organized
under a unified schema at a single site in order to facilitate management decision-making. A
relational database is a collection of tables, each of which is assigned a unique name. Each
table consists of a set of attributes (columns or fields) and usually stores a large set of tuples
(records or rows). Each tuple in a relational table represents an object identified by a unique
key and described by a set of attribute values. Both are used to store and manipulate the
data.
12. List out the functions of OLAP servers in the data warehouse architecture.
(Nov/Dec 2010)
The OLAP server performs multidimensional queries of data and stores the results in
its multidimensional storage. It speeds the analysis of fact tables into cubes, stores the cubes
until needed, and then quickly returns the data to clients.
13. Differentiate data mining and data warehousing. (Nov/Dec 2011)
 Data mining refers to extracting or “mining” knowledge from large amounts of
data. The term is actually a misnomer. Remember that the mining of gold from rocks
or sand is referred to as gold mining rather than rock or sand mining. Thus, data
mining should have been more appropriately named “knowledge mining from data,”
 A data warehouse is usually modeled by a multidimensional database structure,
where each dimension corresponds to an attribute or a set of attributes in the schema,
and each cell stores the value of some aggregate measure, such as count or sales
amount.
14. List out the logical steps needed to build a Data warehouse.
 Collect and analyze business requirements.
 Create a data model and a physical design for the Data warehouse.
 Define data source
 Choose the database technology and platform for the warehouse.
 Extract the data from the operational databases, transform it, clean it up and
load it into the database.
 Choose database access and reporting tool.
 Choose database connectivity software.
 Choose data analysis and presentation software.
 Update the data warehouse
15. Write note on shared-nothing architecture.
 The data is partitioned across all disks and the DBMS is partitioned across multiple
conservers.
 Each of which resides on individual nodes of the parallel system and has an
ownership of its disk and thus it own database partition.
 A shared-nothing RDBMS parallelizes the execution of a SQL query across multiple
processing nodes.
 Each processor has its own memory nd disk and communicates with other processors
by exchanging messages and data over the interconnection network.
16. What are the access tools groups available?
 Data query and reporting tools
 Application development tools
 Executive information system(EIS) tools
 On-line analytical processing tools
 Data mining tools

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UNIT-1 DATA WAREHOUSING

17. Write down the applications of data warehousing. (Apr/May 2008)

 Financial services
 Banking services
 Customer goods
 Retail sectors
 Controlled manufacturing

18. What are the applications of querying tools? (Apr/May 2011)

 Multidimensional analysis
 Decision making
 In-depth analysis such as data classification, clustering
19. List out the two different types of reporting tools. (May/June 2014)
1. Production reporting tools – companies generate regular operational reports or
support high volume batch jobs, such as calculating and printing paychecks.
2. Report writers – are inexpensive desktop tools designed for end users.
20. List the two ways the parallel execution of the tasks with in SQL statements can be
done. (Nov/Dec 2012)
 Horizontal parallelism – which means that the DB partitioned across multiple disks
and parallel processing with in a specific task.
 Vertical parallelism – which occurs among different tasks – all component query
operations (SCAN, JOIN, SORT) are in parallel in a pipelined fashion.
21. What are the technologies included in data warehousing?
 Relational and multi-dimensional database management systems
 Client/server architecture
 Meta data modeling and repositories
 Graphical user interfaces and much more
Part-B

1 With a neat sketch, Describe in detail about Data warehouse architecture. (Nov/Dec
2012. (OR) List and discuss the characteristics and main functions performed by the
components of a data warehouse. Give diagrammatic illustration. (May/June
2014,May/June 2012)
2 List and discuss the steps involved in building a data warehouse. (Nov/Dec 2012)
3 Give detailed information about Meta data in data warehousing. (May/June 2014)
4 List and discuss the steps involved in mapping the data warehouse to a
multiprocessor architecture. (May/June 2014, Nov/Dec 2011)
5 i) Explain the role played by sourcing, acquisition, clean up and transformation tools
in data warehousing. (May/June 2013)
ii) Explain about STAR Join and STAR Index. (Nov/Dec 2012)
6 Describe in detail about DBMS schemas for decision support.
7 Explain about data extraction, clean up and transformation tools.
8 Explain the following:
i) Implementation considerations in building data warehouse
ii) Database architectures for parallel processing.

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IT6702 - DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING
UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

PART – A
1. What are production reporting tools? Give examples. (May/June 2013)
Production reporting tools will let companies generate regular operational
reports or support high-volume batch jobs. Such as calculating and printing pay
checks.
Examples:
 Third generation languages such as COBOL
 Specialized fourth generation languages such as Information
builders, Inc’s Focus
 High-end client/server tools such as MITI’s SQL.
2. Define data cube. (May/June 2013)
Data cube consists of a large set of facts or measures and a number of
dimensions. Facts are numerical measures that are quantities by which we can
analyze the relationship between dimensions. Dimensions are the entities or
perspectives with respect to an organization for keeping records and are
hierarchical nature.
3. What is a Reporting tool? List out the two different types of reporting tools.
(May/June 2014,Nov/Dec 2012)
Reporting tools are software applications that make data extracted in a
query accessible to the user. That is it used for to generate the various types of
reports.
It can be divided into 2 types:
1. Production reporting tools
2. Desktop reporting tools
4. Define OLAP. (May/June 2014)
 OLAP (online analytical processing) is computer processing that enables a
user to easily and selectively extract and view data from different points of
view.
 OLAP is becoming an architecture that an increasing number of enterprises
are implementing to support analytical applications.
5. Briefly discuss the schemas for multidimensional databases.
(May/June 2010, Nov/Dec 2014, May/June 2011)
 Stars schema: The most common modeling paradigm is the star schema, in
which the data warehouse contains (1) a large central table (fact table)
containing the bulk of the data, with no redundancy, and (2) a set of smaller
attendant tables (dimension tables), one for each dimension.
 Snowflakes schema: The snowflake schema is a variant of the star schema
model, where some dimension tables are normalized, thereby further splitting

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UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

the data into additional tables. The resulting schema graph forms a shape
similar to a snowflake.
 Fact Constellations: Sophisticated applications may require multiple fact
tables to share dimension tables. This kind of schema can be viewed as a
collection of stars, and hence is called a galaxy schema or a fact constellation.
6. Define the categories of tools in business analysis. (Nov/Dec 2014)
There are 5 categories of tools in business analysis.
i) Reporting tools – it can be used to generate the reports.
ii) Managed query tools – it can be used to SQL queries for accessing
the databases.
iii) Executive information systems – It allow developers to build
customized, graphical decision support applications or “briefing
books”.
iv) On-line analytical processing – these tools aggregate data along
common business subjects or dimensions and then let users navigate
the hierarchies and dimensions with the click of a mouse button.
v) Data mining – It use a variety of statistical and artificial intelligence
algorithm to analyze the correlation of variables in the data and
extract interesting patterns and relationship to investigate.
7. Differentiate between MOLAP, ROLAP and HOLAP. (Nov/Dec 2013)

MOLAP ROLAP HOLAP

MOLAP stands for ROLAP stands HOLAP stands for Hybrid

Multidimensional Online for Relational Online Online Analytical Processing
Analytical Processing Analytical Processing

The MOLAP storage The ROLAP storage The HOLAP storage mode
mode causes the mode causes the combines attributes of both
aggregations of the aggregations of the MOLAP and ROLAP. Like
partition and a copy of its partition to be stored in MOLAP, HOLAP causes the
source data to be stored in indexed views in the aggregations of the partition
a multidimensional relational database that to be stored in a
structure in Analysis was specified in the multidimensional structure in
Services when the partition’s data source. an SQL Server Analysis
partition is processed. Services instance.

8. List any four tools for performing OLAP. (Nov/Dec 2013)

 Arbor Essbase Web
 Information advantage web OLAP
 Micro strategy DSS web

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UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

 Brio technology
9. Classify OLAP Tools. (Apr/May 2011)
 MOLAP – Multidimensional Online Analytical Processing
 ROLAP – Multirelational Online Analytical Processing
 MQE – Managed Query Environment

10. Define how the complex aggregation at multiple granularities is achieved using
multi-feature cubes? (May/June 2012)
Multi-feature cubes, which compute complex queries involving multiple
dependent aggregates at multiple granularity. These cubes are very useful in
practice. Many complex data mining queries can be answered by multi-feature
cubes without any significant increase in computational cost, in comparison to
cube computation for simple queries with standard data cubes.
11. Give examples for managed query tools. (Nov/Dec 2012)
 IQ software’s IQ objects
 Andyne Computing Ltd’s GQL
 IBM’s Decision server
 Oracle Corp’s Discoverer/2000
12. What is Apex cuboid? (Apr/May 2011,Nov/Dec 2011)
Apex cuboid or 0-D cuboid which holds the highest level of summarization.
The Apex cuboid is typically denoted by all.
13. What is multidimensional database? (Nov/Dec 2011)
Data warehouses and OLAP tools are based on a multidimensional data
model. This model is used for the design of corporate data warehouses and
department data marts. This model contains a star schema, snowflake schema and
fact constellation schemas. The core of multidimensional model is the data cube.
14. What are the applications of query tools? (Nov/Dec 2014)
The applications of query tools are
 Multidimensional analysis
 Decision making
 In-depth analysis such as data classification
 Clustering.
15. Compare OLTP and OLAP. (Apr/May 2008,May/June 2010)
Data Warehouse (OLAP) Operational Database (OLTP)
Involves historical processing of information. Involves day-to-day processing.
OLAP systems are used by knowledge OLTP systems are used by clerks,
workers such as executives, managers and DBAs, or database professionals.
analysts.
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UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

Useful in analyzing the business. Useful in running the business.

It focuses on Information out. It focuses on Data in.
Based on Star Schema, Snowflake, Schema Based on Entity Relationship Model.
and Fact Constellation Schema.
Contains historical data. Contains current data.
Provides summarized and consolidated data. Provides primitive and highly detailed
data.
Provides summarized and multidimensional Provides detailed and flat relational
view of data. view of data.
Number or users is in hundreds. Number of users is in thousands.
Number of records accessed is in millions. Number of records accessed is in tens.
Database size is from 100 GB to 1 TB Database size is from 100 MB to 1 GB.
Highly flexible. Provides high performance.

16. List out OLAP operations in multidimensional data model. (May/June 2009)
 Roll-up - performs aggregation on a data cube
 Drill-down - is the reverse operation of roll-up.
 Slice and dice – Slice operation selects one particular dimension from a
given cube and provides a new sub-cube. Dice selects two or more
dimensions from a given cube and provides a new sub-cube.
 Pivot (or) rotate - The pivot operation is also known as rotation. It rotates
the data axes in view in order to provide an alternative presentation of data.
17. Mention the functions of OLAP servers in the data warehousing architecture.
(Nov/Dec 2010)
The OLAP server performs multidimensional queries of data and stores the
results in its multidimensional storage. It speeds the analysis of fact tables into
cubes, stores the cubes until needed, and then quickly returns the data to clients.
18. What is Impromptu?
Impromptu from Cognos Corporation is positioned as an enterprise solution
for interactive database reporting that delivers 1 to 100+ seat scalability.
19. Mention some supported databases of Impromptu.
 ORACLE
 Microsoft SQL Server
 SYBASE
 Omni SQL Gateway
 SYBASE Net Gateway
20. What is enterprise warehouse?

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UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

An enterprise warehouse collects all the information’s about subjects spanning

the entire organization. It provides corporate-wide data integration, usually from
one or more operational systems or external information providers. It contains
detailed data as well as summarized data and can range in size from a few giga
bytes to hundreds of giga bytes, tera bytes or beyond.

21. Write note on Report writers.

 Report writers are inexpensive desktop tools designed for end users.
 Report writers have graphical interfaces and built-in charting functions; they
can pull groups of data from variety of data sources and integrate them in a
single report.
 Leading report writers include Crystal Reports, Actuate and Platinum
technology, Inc’s Info reports.

PART – B
1. Explain in detail about the reporting and query tools. (May/June 2014)
2. Describe in detail about COGNOS IMPROMTU. (May/June 2014)
3. Explain the categorization of OLAP tools with necessary diagrams.(May/June
2014)
4. i) List and explain the OLAP operation in multidimensional data model.
(Nov/Dec 2014)
ii) Differentiate between OLTP and OLAP. (Nov/Dec 2014)
5. i)List and discuss the features of Cognos Impromptu. (Nov/Dec 2012)
ii)List and discuss the basic features data provided by reporting and query tools
used for business analysis. (Apr/May 2011)
6. i) What is a Multidimensional data model? Explain star schema with an example.
(May/June 2014)
ii) Write the difference between multi-dimensional OLAP (MOLAP) and Multi-
relational OLAP (ROLAP). (May/June 2014, Nov/Dec 2012)
7. Explain the following: (May/June 2012)
i) Different schemas for multidimensional databases.

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IT6702 - DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING
UNIT-2 BUSINESS ANALYSIS

ii) OLAP guidelines.

8. i) Write in detail about Managed Query Environment (MQE).
ii) Explain about how to use OLAP tools on the Internet.

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IT6702 - DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING
UNIT-3 DATA MINING

PART – A
1. Define data mining. Give some alternative terms of data mining.
 Data mining refers to extracting or “mining” knowledge from large amounts of data.
Data mining is a process of discovering interesting knowledge from large amounts of
data stored either, in database, data warehouse or other information repositories.
 Alternative names are
 Knowledge mining
 Knowledge extraction
 Data/pattern analysis
 Data Archaeology
 Data Dredging
2. What is KDD? What are the steps involved in KDD process?
Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is the process of discovering useful
knowledge from a collection of data. This widely used data mining technique is a process
that includes data preparation and selection, data cleansing, incorporating prior knowledge
on data sets and interpreting accurate solutions from the observed results.
The steps involved in KDD process are
 Data Cleaning − In this step, the noise and inconsistent data is removed.
 Data Integration − In this step, multiple data sources are combined.
 Data Selection − In this step, data relevant to the analysis task are retrieved from
the database.
 Data Transformation − In this step, data is transformed or consolidated into forms
appropriate for mining by performing summary or aggregation operations.
 Data Mining − In this step, intelligent methods are applied in order to extract data
patterns.
 Pattern Evaluation − In this step, to identify the truly interesting patterns
representing knowledge based on some interestingness measures.
 Knowledge Presentation − In this step, visualization and knowledgerepresentation
techniques are used to present the mined knowledge to the user.
3. What are the various forms of data preprocessing? (Apr/May 2008)
 Data cleaning
 Data integration
 Data transformation
 Data reduction
4. State why preprocessing an important issue for data warehousing and data
mining? (Apr/May 2011)
In real world data tend to be incomplete, noisyand inconsistent data. So
preprocessing is an important issue for data warehousing and data mining.

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UNIT-3 DATA MINING

5. Write the 2 measures of association rule. (Apr/May 2008)

 Support – It means how often X and Y occur together as a percentage of the total
transaction.
 Confidence – It measures how much a particular item is dependent on another.
6. What is descriptive and predictive data mining? (May/June 2014)
 The descriptive data-mining model is discover patterns in the data and understands
the relationships between attributes represented by the data.
 In contrast, the predictive data-mining model predicts the future outcomes based on
passed records present in the database or with known answers.
7. What is data transformation? (Nov/Dec 2014)
In data transformation, the data are transformed or consolidated into forms
appropriate for mining. Strategies for data transformation include the following:
 Smoothing
 Aggregation
 Generalization of the data
 Normalization
 Attribute construction
8. What is data cleaning? (Nov/Dec 2007,Nov/Dec 2011,May/June 2013)
Data cleaning is a process used to determine inaccurate, incomplete or
unreasonable data and then improve the quality through correcting of detected errors and
omissions. Generally data cleaning reduces errors and improves the data quality.
9. List some applications of Data Mining. (May/June 2008)
 Financial Data Analysis
 Retail Industry
 Telecommunication Industry
 Biological Data Analysis
 Other Scientific Applications
 Intrusion Detection
10. What is pattern evaluation? (May/June 2013)
This is one of the steps in the KDD process. In this step, the patterns obtained in the
data mining stage are converted in to knowledge based on some interestingness measures.
11. List the primitives that specify a data mining tasks. (May/June 2012)
 Task-relevant data
 Knowledge type to be mined
 Background knowledge
 Pattern interestingness measure
 Visualization of discovered patterns

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UNIT-3 DATA MINING

12. Differentiate between data characterization and discrimination? (Nov/Dec 2013)

Data Characterization Data Discrimination
Characterization is a Discrimination is a comparison of the general
summarization of the general features of target class data objects with the
characteristics or features of a general features of objects from one or a set of
target class of data. contrasting classes.
13. State why concept hierarchies are useful in data mining. (Nov/Dec 2012)
Concept hierarchies define a sequence of mappings from a set of lower-level
concepts to higher-level, more general concepts and can be represented as a set of nodes
organized in a tree, in the form of a lattice, or as a partial order. They are useful in data
mining because they allow the discovery of knowledge at multiple levels of abstraction and
provide the structure on which data can be generalized (rolled-up) or specialized (drilled-
down). Together, these operations allow users to view the data from different perspectives,
gaining further insight into relationships hidden in the data. Generalizing has the advantage
of compressing the data set, and mining on a compressed data set will require fewer I/O
operations. This will be more efficient than mining on a large, uncompressed data set.
14. What do data mining functionalities include? (Apr/May 2011)
Data mining functionalities are used to specify the kind of patterns to be found in
data mining tasks. Data mining tasks can be classified in to 2 categories: Descriptive and
Predictive.
15. What is classification? (May/June 2011)
Classification involves finding rules that partition the data into disjoint groups. The
input for the classification is the training data set, whose class labels are already known.
Classification analyzes the training data set and contracts a model based on the class label
and aims to assign a class label to the future unlabeled records.
16. Describe challenges to data mining regarding performance issues.
 Efficiency and scalability of data mining algorithms
 Parallel, distributed and incremental mining algorithms
17. What is prediction?
Prediction is used to predict missing or unavailable data values rather than class
labels. Prediction refers to both data value prediction and class label prediction.
18. What are outliers?
Data objects which differ significantly from the remaining data objects are referred
to as outliers.
19. What are the two steps using in data cleaning as a process?
 Discrepancy detection
 Data transformation
20. List out the issues of data integration.
 Schema integration and object matching
 Redundancy
 Detection and resolution of data value conflict

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UNIT-3 DATA MINING

21. List out data reduction strategies.

 Data cube aggregation
 Attribute subset selection
 Dimensionality reduction
 Numerosity reduction
 Discretization and concept hierarchy generation

PART-B

1. i) Explain various methods of data cleaning in detail. (Apr/May 2008)

ii) How a data mining system can be integrated with a data warehousing? Discuss with
example. (Apr/May 2011, Nov/Dec 2011)
2. What is the use of data mining task? What are the basic types of data mining tasks?
Explain with examples. (May/June 2014)
3. i) Explain with diagrammatic illustration data mining as a step in the process of
knowledge discovery. (May/June 2013)
ii) What is evaluation analysis? Give example. (May/June 2013)
4. i) Explain with diagrammatic illustration data mining as a confluence of multiple
disciplines. (Nov/Dec 2012,May/June 2013)
ii) Explain with diagrammatic illustration the primitives for specifying a data mining
task. (Nov/Dec 2011, Nov/Dec 2012, May/June 2013)
5. Explain the various data mining issues and functionalities in detail. (Nov/Dec 2014,
May/June 2011)
6. State and explain the various classifications of data mining systems with examples.
(Apr/May 2011, Nov/Dec 2014,Nov/Dec 2013)
7. i) Describe the various descriptive statistical measures for data mining. (May/June
2012)
ii) What are the major issues in data mining? Explain. (May/June 2012)
8. Write short notes on the various preprocessing tasks. (Nov/Dec 2013)

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IT6702 DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING

Unit – 4 ASSOCIATION RULE MINING AND CLASSIFICATION

PART-A

1. What is decision tree method? (Apr/May 2008)

A decision tree is a flowchart like tree structure, where each internal node denotes
a test on an attribute, each branch represents an outcome of the test and leaf nodes
represent classes or class distributions. The top most in a tree is the node.
2. Distinguish between classification and clustering. (Apr/May 2008)
classification Clustering
Supervised learning Unsupervised learning
Class label of each training sample Class label of each training sample is
is provided. not known
The set of classes are not known in The number or set of classes to be
advance. learned advance.
Learning by example. Learning by observation.
3. List out the major strength of decision tree method. (Apr/May 2008)
 Construction of decision tree classifiers does not require any domain knowledge
or parameter setting and therefore is appropriate for exploratory knowledge
discovery.
 Handle high dimensional data.
 Simple and fast.
 Used for many applications such as medicine, manufacturing, financial analysis,
astronomy, etc.
 Basis of several commercial role induction systems.
4. How do you choose best split while constructing a decision tree.( May/June 2014)
By using attribute selection measures we choose best split while
constructing a decision tree. The measures are
 Information gain
 Gain ratio
 Gini index
5. What are tree pruning methods? (Nov/Dec 2011)
Tree pruning use statistical measures to remove the least reliable branches. Pruned
trees tend to be smaller and less complex and easier to comprehend. The tree pruning
methods are
 Prepruning
 Post pruning
 Pessimistic pruning
6. With an example explain correlation analysis? (Nov/Dec 2011, May/June 2012)
A correlation measure can be used to augment the support and confidence but also
for association rules. This leads to correlation rules of the form
A=> B [support, confidence, correlation]
7. Give examples for binary and multidimensional association rules.(Nov/Dec 2013)
 Binary or Single dimensional association rule
buys(X=“computer”) => buys(X=“HP Printer”)
 Multidimensional association rules
Age(X,”30..39”) ᴧ income(X,”2000..40000”) => buys(X,”LCD TV”)
8. List the 2 interesting measures of an association rule. (Nov/Dec 2012,May/June
2011)
There are 2 interesting measures od an association rule. They are
 Support (A=>B)=P(A U B)
 Confidence (A=>B)=P(B / A)
9. What is a support vector machine? (Apr/May 2011)
Decision tree induction algorithms function recursively. First, an attribute must be
selected as the root node. In order to create the most efficient (smallest) tree, the root
node must effectively split the data. Each split attempts to pare down a set of instances
(the actual data) until they all have the same classification. The split is the one that
provides what is termed the most information gain.
10. State the need for pruning phase in decision tree construction? (May/June 2011)
When a decision tree is built many of the branches will reflect anomalies in the
training data to noise or outliers. Tree pruning methods address this problem of outfitting
the data. Such methods typically use statistical measures to remove the least reliable
branches
11. Define frequent patterns.
Frequent patterns are patterns (such as item sets, subsequences or substructures) that
appear in a dataset frequently.

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12. Define Market basket analysis.
A typical example of frequent item set mining is market basket analysis. This
process analyzes customer buying habits by fining associations between the different
items that customers place in their shopping baskets.
13. What is STRONG?
The rules that satisfy both a minimum support threshold (min_sup) and a
minimum confidence threshold (min_conf) are called strong.
14. Define Apriori property.
All nonempty subsets of a frequent itemset must also be frequent.
15. What is Anti-monotone?
If a set cannot pass a test, all of its subsets will fail the same test as well.
16. Define Association rule.
It searches for interesting relationships among items in a given data set.
17. What are the constraints can include the constraint-based association mining?
 Knowledge type constraints
 Data constraints
 Dimension/level constraints
 Interestingness constraints
 Rule constraints
18. What are the steps involved in data classification?
Data classification is a 2 step process. They are
1) Learning step 2) Classification step.
19. What are the preprocessing steps can be used in classification or prediction process.
 Data cleaning
 Relevance analysis
 Data transformation and reduction
20. What is ID3?
It is a decision tree algorithm used by decision tree induction.
21. List some popular attribute selection measures.
 Information gain
 Gain ratio
 Gini index
22. Define Bayesian Belief networks.
 It specifies joint conditional probability distributions they allow class conditional
independencies to be defined between subsets of variables.
 A belief network is defined by 2 components:
 Directed acyclic graph
 Set of conditional probability tables.

PART-B
1. Write and explain the algorithm for mining frequent item sets with candidate generation.
Give relevant example.

2. Write and explain the algorithm for mining frequent item sets without candidate
generation. Give relevant example.
3. Discuss the approaches foe mining multi-level and multi-dimensional association rules
from the transactional databases. Give relevant example.

4. i) Explain the algorithm for constructing a decision tree from training samples. (12)
ii) Explain about Bayes Theorem. (4)

5. i) Apply the Apriori algorithm for discovering frequent item sets of the following. Use
0.3 for minimum support value.
(12)
TID Items purchased
101 milk,bread,eggs
102 milk,juice
103 juice,butter
104 milk,bread,eggs
105 coffee,eggs
106 coffee
107 coffee,juice
108 milk,bread,cookies,eggs
109 cookies,butter
110 milk,bread

ii) Write short notes on: Prediction. (4)

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6. Explain the following:
i) Constraint-based association mining (8)
ii) Classification by backpropagation (8)

7. i) Explain the 2 steps for data classification. (8)

ii) Explain about Bayesian classification. (8)
8. Describe in detail about classification by decision induction.

9. Explain the following:

i) Rule-based classification (8)
ii)Lasy learners. (8)
10. Explain the following:
i) Support vector machines (8)
ii) Associative classification (8)

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IT6702 - DATA WAREHOUSING AND DATA MINING

UNIT-5 CLUSTERING AND APPLICATIONS AND TRENDS IN DATA MINING

PART – A

1. What do you go for clustering analysis? (Nov/Dec 2011)

Clustering can be used to generate a concept hierarchy for A by following either a top down
splitting strategy or a bottom-up merging strategy, where each cluster forms a node of the concept
hierarchy. In the former, each initial cluster or partition may be further decomposed into several sub
clusters, forming a lower level of the hierarchy. In the latter, clusters are formed by repeatedly
grouping neighboring clusters in order to form higher-level concepts.
2. What are the requirements of cluster analysis? (Nov/Dec 2010)
 Scalability
 Ability to deal with different types of attributes
 Discovery of clusters with arbitrary shape
 Minimal requirements for domain knowledge to determine input parameters
 Ability to deal with noisy data
 Incremental clustering and insensitivity to the order of input records
 High dimensionality
 Constraint-based clustering
 Interpretability and usability
3. What is mean by cluster analysis? (April/May 2008)
A cluster analysis is the process of analyzing the various clusters to organize the different
objects into meaningful and descriptive object.
4. Define: Outlier Analysis. ( Nov/Dec 2014)
A database may contain data objects that do not comply with the general behavior or model of
the data. These data objects are outliers. The analysis of outliers data is referred to as outlier
analysis.
5. Define CLARANS.
 CLARANS (Cluster Large Applications based on Randomized Search) to improve the
quality of CLARA we go for CLARANS.
 It Draws sample with some randomness in each step of search.
 It overcomes the problem of scalability that K-Medoids suffers from.
6. Define BIRCH, ROCK and CURE.
BIRCH (Balanced Iterative Reducing and Clustering Using Hierarchies): Partitions
objects hierarchically using tree structures and then refines the clusters using other clustering methods.
It defines a clustering feature and an associated tree structure that summarizes a cluster. The tree is a
height balanced tree that stores cluster information. BIRCH doesn’t produce spherical Cluster and may
produce unintended cluster.
ROCK (RObust Clustering using links): Merges clusters based on their interconnectivity.
Great for categorical data. Ignores information about the looseness of two clusters while emphasizing
interconnectivity.
CURE (Clustering Using Representatives): Creates clusters by sampling the database and
shrinks them toward the center of the cluster by a specified fraction. Obviously better in runtime but
lacking in precision.
7. What is meant by web usage mining? (Nov/Dec 2007)(April/May 2008)(Nov/Dec2009)
(May/June 2010)
Web usage mining is the process of extracting useful information from server logs i.e. users
history. Web usage mining is the process of finding out what users are looking for on the Internet.
Some users might be looking at only textual data, whereas some others might be interested in
multimedia data.
8. What is mean by audio data mining? (Nov/Dec 2007)
Audio data mining uses audio signals to indicate the patterns of data or the features of data
mining results. Although visual data mining may disclose interesting patterns using graphical displays,
it requires users to concentrate on watching patterns and identifying interesting or novel features
within them. This can sometimes be quite tiresome. If patterns can be transformed into sound and
music, then instead of watching pictures, we can listen to pitches, rhythms, tune, and melody in order
to identify anything interesting or unusual. This may relieve some of the burden of visual
concentration and be more relaxing than visual mining. Therefore, audio data mining is an interesting
complement to visual mining.
9. Define visual data mining. (April/May 2008)
Visual data mining discovers implicit and useful knowledge from large data sets using data
and/or knowledge visualization techniques. The human visual system is controlled by the eyes and
brain, the latter of which can be thought of as a powerful, highly parallel processing and reasoning

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engine containing a large knowledge base. Visual data mining essentially combines the power of these
components, making it a highly attractive and effective tool for the comprehension of data
distributions, patterns, clusters, and outliers in data.
10. What is mean by the frequency item set property? (Nov/Dec 2008)
A set of items is referred to as an itemset. An itemset that contains k items is a k-itemset. The
set {computer, antivirus software} is a 2-itemset. The occurrence frequency of an itemset is the
number of transactions that contain the itemset. This is also known, simply, as the frequency, support
count, or count of the itemset.
11. Mention the advantages of hierarchical clustering. (Nov/Dec 2008)
Hierarchical clustering (or hierarchic clustering) outputs a hierarchy, a structure that is more
informative than the unstructured set of clusters returned by flat clustering. Hierarchical clustering
does not require us to prespecify the number of clusters and most hierarchical algorithms that have
been used in IR are deterministic. These advantages of hierarchical clustering come at the cost of
lower efficiency.
12. Define time series analysis. (May/June 2009)
Time series analysis comprises methods for analyzing time series data in order to extract
meaningful statistics and other characteristics of the data. Time series forecasting is the use of a model
to predict future values based on previously observed values. Time series are very frequently plotted
via line charts.
13. What is mean by web content mining? (May/June 2009)
Web content mining, also known as text mining, is generally the second step in Web data
mining. Content mining is the scanning and mining of text, pictures and graphs of a Web page to
determine the relevance of the content to the search query. This scanning is completed after the
clustering of web pages through structure mining and provides the results based upon the level of
relevance to the suggested query. With the massive amount of information that is available on the
World Wide Web, content mining provides the results lists to search engines in order of highest
relevance to the keywords in the query.
14. Write down some applications of data mining.(Nov/Dec 2009)
 Financial Data Analysis
 Retail Industry
 Telecommunication Industry
 Biological Data Analysis
 Scientific Applications
 Intrusion Detection
15. List out the methods for information retrieval. (May/June 2010)
They generally either view the retrieval problem as a document selection problem or as a
document ranking problem. In document selection methods, the query is regarded as specifying
constraints for selecting relevant documents. A typical method of this category is the Boolean retrieval
model, in which a document is represented by a set of keywords and a user provides a Boolean
expression of keywords, such as “car and repair shops,” “tea or coffee” .
Document ranking methods use the query to rank all documents in the order of relevance. For
ordinary users and exploratory queries, these methods are more appropriate than document selection
methods.
16. What is the categorical variable? (Nov/Dec 2010)
A categorical variable is a generalization of the binary variable in that it can take on more than
two states. For example, map color is a categorical variable that may have, say, five states: red, yellow,
green, pink, and blue. Let the number of states of a categorical variable be M. The states can be
denoted by letters, symbols, or a set of integers, such as 1, 2, …, M. Notice that such integers are used
just for data handling and do not represent any specific ordering.
17. What is the difference between row scalability and column scalability? (Nov/Dec 2010)
Data mining has two kinds of scalability issues: row (or database size) scalability and column
(or dimension) scalability.
A data mining system is considered row scalable if, when the number of rows is enlarged 10
times, it takes no more than 10 times to execute the same data mining queries. A data mining system is
considered column scalable if the mining query execution time increases linearly with the number of
columns (or attributes or dimensions). Due to the curse of dimensionality, it is much more challenging
to make a system column scalable than row scalable.
18. What are the major challenges faced in bringing data mining research to market? (Nov/Dec
2010)
The diversity of data, data mining tasks, and data mining approaches poses many challenging
research issues in data mining. The development of efficient and effective data mining methods and
systems, the construction of interactive and integrated data mining environments, the design of data
mining languages, and the application of data mining techniques to solve large application problems
are important tasks for data mining researchers and data mining system and application developers.
19. What is mean by multimedia database? (Nov/Dec 2011)

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A multimedia database system stores and manages a large collection of multimedia data, such
as audio, video, image, graphics, speech, text, document, and hypertext data, which contain text, text
markups, and linkages. Multimedia database systems are increasingly common owing to the popular
use of audio, video equipment, digital cameras, CD-ROMs, and the Internet.
20. Define DB miner. (Nov/Dec 2011)
DBMiner delivers business intelligence and performance management applications powered
by data mining. With new and insightful business patterns and knowledge revealed by DBMiner.
DBMiner Insight solutions are world's first server applications providing powerful and highly scalable
association, sequence and differential mining capabilities for Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
platform, and they also provide market basket, sequence discovery and profit optimization for
Microsoft Accelerator for Business Intelligence.
21. Define: Dendrogram.
 A tree structure called a dentrogram is commonly used to represent the process of hierarchical
clustering.
 Decompose data objects into a several levels of nested partitioning (tree of clusters) called a
dendrogram.
PART – B

1. i) What is cluster analysis? Explain about requirements of clustering in data mining.

ii) Explain about data mining applications.
2. Describe in detail about types of data in cluster analysis.
3. i) Write note on: categorization of major clustering methods.
ii) Explain the following clustering methods in detail:
i) BIRCH
ii) CURE
4. Explain in detail about partitioning methods.
5. Describe in detail about hierarchical methods.
6. Explain the following:
i) Density based - methods
ii) Constraint based cluster analysis
7. Explain the following:
i) Grid based methods
ii) Model based clustering methods
8. Explain about clustering high dimensional data
9. Explain about outlier analysis.

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