Database Mining

The term database mining refers to the process of extracting information from a set database and transforming that into understandable information. The data mining process is also known as data dredging or data snooping. The consumer focused companies into retail, financial, communication, and marketing fields are using data mining for cost reduction and increase revenues. This process is the powerful technology, which helps the organisations to focus on the most important and relevant information from their collected data. Organisations can easily understand the potential customers and their behaviour with this process. By predicting behaviours of future trends the recruitment process outsourcing firms assists the multiple organisations to make proactive and profitable decisions in their business. The database mining term is originated from the similarities between searching for valuable information in large databases and mining a mountain for a vein of valuable crystal.

Recruitment process outsourcing firm helps the organisation for the betterment of their future by analyzing the data from distinctive dimensions or angles. From the business point of view, the data mining and data entry services leads the organisation to increase their profitability and customer demands. Data mining process is must for every organisation to survive in the competitive market and quality assurance. Now a day the data mining services are actively utilised and adapted by many organisations to achieve great success and analyse competitor growth, profit analysis, budget, and sales etc. The data mining is a form of artificial intelligence that uses the automated process to find required information. You can easily and swiftly plan your business strategy for the future by finding and collecting the equivalent information from huge data.

With the advanced analytics and modern techniques, the database mining process uncovers the in-depth business intelligence. You can ask for the certain information and let this process provide you information, which can lead to an immense improvement in your business and quality. Every organisation holds a huge amount of data in their database. Due to rapid computerisation of business, the large amount of data gets produced by every organisation and then database mining comes in the picture. When there are problems arising and challenges addressing in the database management of your organisation, the fundamental usage of data mining will help you out with maximum returns. Thus, from the strategic point of view, the rapidly growing world of digital data will depend on the ability of mining and managing the data.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Database-Mining&id=7292341

Know the Different Types of Mining Processes

Mining has become a controversial industry because of its "devastating" effect to the environment and the ecosystem. However, it has contributed so much to civilization that without it, we could never be where we are today in many aspects.

There are two basic methods of mining. These are the surface and the underground mining processes:

1. Surface Mining

This involves the mining of minerals located at or near the surface of the earth. This encompasses at least six processes and these are:

• Strip Mining - this involves the stripping of the earth's surface by heavy machinery. This method is generally targeted at extracting coal or sedimentary rocks that lay near the earth's surface.

• Placer Mining - this involves the extraction of sediments in sand or gravel. It is a simple, old-fashioned way of mining. This method is generally applicable to gold and precious gems that are carried by the flow of water.

• Mountain Top Mining - this is a new method which involves blasting of a mountain top to expose coal deposits that lie underneath the mountain crest.

• Hydraulic Mining - this is an obsolete method that involves jetting the side of a mountain or hill with high pressure water to expose gold and other precious metals.

• Dredging - it involves the removal of rocks, sand and silt underneath a body of water to expose the minerals.

• Open Pit - this is the most common mining method. It involves the removal of the top layers of soil in search for gold or buried treasure. The miner digs deeper and deeper until a large, open-pit is created.

2. Underground Mining

This is the process in which a tunnel is made into the earth to find the mineral ore. The mining operation is usually performed with the use of underground mining equipment. Underground mining is done through the following methods:

• Slope Mining - it involves the creation of slopes into the ground in order to reach the ore or mineral deposit. This process is generally applied in coal mining.

• Hard rock - this method uses dynamite or giant drills to create large, deep tunnels. The miners support the tunnels with pillars to prevent them from collapsing. This is a large-scale mining process and is usually applied in the extraction of large copper, tin, lead, gold or silver deposits.

• Drift mining - this method is applicable only when the target mineral is accessible from the side of a mountain. It involves the creation of a tunnel that's slightly lower than the target mineral. The gravity makes the deposit fall to the tunnel where miners can collect them.

• Shaft method - this involves the creation of a vertical passageway that goes deep down underground where the deposit is located. Because of the depth, miners are brought in and out of the pit with elevators.

• Borehole method - this involves the use of a large drill and high pressure water to eject the target mineral.

These are the basic methods used in the extraction of common minerals. There are more complex systems, but still, they are based on these fundamental processes.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Know-the-Different-Types-of-Mining-Processes&id=7932442

CSR in the Extraction Sector

A study commissioned by the Canadian Mining industry found that Canadian mining companies were involved in 4 times as many mining "incidents" as companies from other countries. The study was intended for internal consumption only but has been leaked to the press recently. The study found that Canadian mining companies were involved in nearly two thirds of the 171 "high profile" environmental and human rights violations it studied occurring between 1999 and 2009. Members of the mining industry pointed out that the occurrences are in proportion to their representation on the global mining scene, indicating that they were no better or worse than companies from other countries.

First some background on the study. The study findings were captured in a report titled "Corporate Social Responsibility & the Canadian International Extractive Sector: A Survey". The report was prepared for the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict (CCSRC). The purpose of the study was to measure the level of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the "extractive" sector. The extractive sector, for those of us untutored in the terminology means exploration, gas, oil, and mining companies. The document leaked to the press was a first draft of the report, not the final draft. I should also mention that there is a bill, C-300, before the Canadian parliament which would make financing for foreign ventures contingent on meeting federally defined CSR standards. The exploration, gas, oil, and mining companies, and the organizations which represent them are very much against this bill. Leaking the negative aspects of this report was fortuitous for those in support of bill C-300 and disastrous for those opposed to it.

One of the observations the report makes is that adoption of formal CSR policies by companies with international interests is "remarkably low", but that those companies which have adopted CSR policies have experienced positive outcomes. The CCSRC contacted 584 companies which they felt met their criteria to participate in the study. Of those, 202 chose to participate. The first survey question was "Do you have a CSR policy or Code of International Business Conduct?" 56 of the 202 companies had documented policies in place. The study broke the 202 companies they surveyed into "junior" and "major" companies. 50% of the companies designated as major had documented CSR policies while only 21% of junior companies had one.

The survey also asked about the positive effects of a CSR policy. 24% of respondents claimed a reduction in conflicts or complications, 62% claimed better community relations (relations with the communities they were doing business in), and 25% reported increased shareholder interest. On the downside, 24% reported increased administration costs and 25% reported increased operating costs. One question they failed to ask was whether the benefits outweighed the costs.

The information I've stated in the preceding 2 paragraphs was gleaned from the final draft of the report. I don't have access to the first draft but apparently it described some of the 171 violations they were addressing in the study. I reported on one such violation in Project Management Tips section of this web site under the title "CSR Problems". The incidents reported on reflect the difficulty faced by companies who conduct business in some international locations. These incidents juxtapose our Canadian values and ethics with those of the countries our exploration, gas, mining, and oil companies do business in. One incident reported on, and attributed to the mining company's lack of CSR by the media, pitted one host community against another with the resulting violence blamed on the Canadian mining company. I'm not suggesting here that these companies have not made mistakes in the past, or that improvements cannot be made in their CSR efforts, I am suggesting that we should have realistic expectations about the effectiveness of a CSR policy to prevent any problems in a foreign venture.

A reasonable expectation in some cases would be that the company have a documented CSR policy which conforms to the standards and ethics of this country (Canada), abides by the laws of the host country, and conforms to the standards and ethics of the host country. The expectation should be tempered with the acknowledgment that the operating environment these companies encounter in host countries can be radically different than that found here. For example, when one community is in conflict with another over whether a mining operation should take place, we tend to look to non-violent forms of dispute resolution where some countries may resort to extreme violence to settle the dispute. Canadian companies frequently hire locals as security guards to protect their property as local authorities cannot perform this duty for one reason or another. It is reasonable to expect the hiring company to do its due diligence in hiring these people to ensure they don't create a threat to the surrounding community. It is not reasonable to expect that there will be no conflicts arising out of these situations. Where it is suspected that a security guard overstepped their authority, or engaged in illegal behaviour, it is reasonable to expect the employer to cooperate with the local authorities in the investigation.

North American companies doing business internationally have long had to deal with conflicts between acceptable corporate behaviour in their own country and acceptable behaviour in the host country. Bribery is the classic example. There are countries where bribery is not only accepted but essential to conducting business. Our laws will convict anyone proved to have offered a bribe but failure to pay the bribe may result in a failure to perform on the part of the North American company. Failure to perform might result in the loss of all or part of the company's investment in the project. Holding a company to this type of double standard can only result in one of 2 outcomes: the company will break the rule against bribery, or the company will cease to do business in that host country.

Since this web site is aimed at the project management community, let's draw some conclusions from the survey and CSR in general that may help project managers. The first conclusion I would draw from all of the above is that the CSR policy that governs your project must describe achievable goals. By this I mean that the goals, objectives, and standards stated in the policy must be within the project's power to achieve, or comply with. The second conclusion is that the right CSR policy carefully implemented can provide a business benefit to the organization. It is the project manager's job to ensure that those benefits are realized.

The goals and objectives of the project must include goals and objectives in support of the CSR policy. Those goals and objectives should be spelled out in the Project Charter and the connection between those goals and objectives and the CSR policy clearly defined. Make sure that the CSR related goals and objectives you set for the project are clearly defined, measurable, and obtainable and then agree with your stakeholders on the conditions that will indicate the goals have been met. Check for CSR policy goals and objectives that might conflict with each other and any of your project's goals and objectives, both CSR related and non-CSR. Goals and objectives you feel might conflict with each other, or with the CSR policy should be resolved by senior management. Start your escalation by drawing the project sponsor's attention to the conflict and ask for their help with resolution.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?CSR-in-the-Extraction-Sector&id=5675024

The Equipment Used in Mining

Bureau of Labor statistics reported that there are five major segments in the mining industry. They are gas and oil extracting, coal mining, non-metal mineral mining, metal ore mining and the supporting activities. In this matter, each segment might need different equipment. But, there are some types of mining equipment that are used by all segments of the mining industry.

Excavators

Excavators are types of equipment that are used by the miners to break and remove soil today. Traditionally, they used steam shovels and shovels to do the jobs. An excavator is a vehicle that moves with standard wheels or moves on tracks. There is a rotating platform and a bucket to its end for digging the soil.

Draglines

Draglines are very big earth moving machines that are used in mining industry. These machines are used to expose the underlying mineral deposits. These are also used to drag away the dirt. The Kentucky Coal Education said that draglines are one of the largest machine in the world. These can remove several hundred tons of the material in one pass.

Drills

Drills are very important for miners that extract natural gas and oil. Miners use these machines to reach underground deposits before they pipe the resources to the surface. Instead of being used in gas and oil mining, these machines are also used to mine coal and mineral.

Roof bolters

These machines are used to prevent underground collapses when the mining process is in progress. These are also used to support the tunnel roofs in mining location.

Continuous miners and longwall miners

These machines are usually used by subterranean coal miners. These machines are used to scrape coal from the coal beds. Meanwhile, the longwall miners are machines that are used to remove large, rectangular sections of coal instead of scraping coal from a bed.

Rock duster

These are pressurized pieces of equipment that are used in coal mining to spray inert mineral dust over the highly flammable coal dust. This inert dust will help prevent accidental explosions and fires.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Equipment-Used-in-Mining&id=5633103

Junk Car Removal Services: Lucrative Way to Bid Farewell to Scrap Cars

Are your still wondering if it is the time to call a junk car removal company?

Well, you should call a reliable scrap car removal company, when any one of the below situations is true:

- Your car has a very low trade-in value

- Despite repeated repairs, your car is not working well.

- The vehicle has been in an accident and declared a total loss.

- When you think of selling it, you hardly find any positive points to sell it for a substantial price.

- Your car has become a stationary object.

There are many important benefits of hiring scrap car removal services

- Get a good amount of cash

It may come as a surprise, but your useless car can fetch you a handsome sum. The junk car removal companies will always find something worthy of attention in your piece of junk. In fact, these companies have numerous uses for your car.

They can repair and reuse the broken-down parts of the cars. In case, your entire car has turned into scrap then too, you should contact a junk car removal company. It will save you from being duped.

These companies have experts, who can find multiple utilities for your car and quote a suitable price, accordingly.

If you try to sell your car to a scrap dealer, then you will get the price of scrap and not of the car.

- Sell any model from anywhere

A junk car removal company will never be choosy regarding the make of the car. Other alternatives like the towing companies have a definite list of models of cars that they tow. In case your vehicle does not belong in the list, then they will refuse you out rightly.

Moreover, towing companies do not have the expertise or equipment to work under challenging situations. For instance, if your scrap car has been parked for long and is stuck in debris, then a towing company may not be able to help you.

On the other hand, a junk car removal company is well equipped with work force, and the latest technology to deal with every situation.

It will reach your junk car and tow it away. When you call them for fixing an appointment, they will ask you what the destination of the car is. Provide them with the details. Then, just wait for them to arrive and help you in getting rid of the scrap.

You may have the latest model or an old one, if your car is not living up to your standards, then it is time to call the junk car removal company.

- Fix timing at your convenience and receive prompt services

When you have decided to sell your junk car to a company, you can enjoy the liberty of carrying out the transaction any time you want.

Yes, being the owner of the car, you are free to decide the timing of its pick-up. The scrap car-removal companies are very particular regarding timings.

- Environment-friendly option

The junk car removal companies adopt an earth-friendly approach while getting rid of the junk cars. A trash car pollutes the environment by releasing harmful gases. The companies ensure that every car that it has picked goes through several levels of checks.

During the process, all the parts, which can be reused in any form, are extracted and recycled. Only those parts, which cannot be put into use, in any form, are taken to the junk yard.

Thus, by opting for a scrap car removal company, you are saving the environment and helping in keeping your surroundings clean and healthy.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Junk-Car-Removal-Services:-Lucrative-Way-to-Bid-Farewell-to-Scrap-Cars&id=7206487

Why Common Measures Taken To Prevent Scraping Aren't Effective

Bots became more powerful in 2014. As the war continues, let’s take a closer look at why common strategies to prevent scraping didn’t pay off.

With the market for online businesses expanding rapidly, the development teams behind these online portals are under great amounts of pressure to keep up in the race. Scalability, availability and responsiveness are some of the commonly faced problems for a growing online business portal. As the value of content is increasing, content theft has become an increasing problem in the form of web scraping.

Competitors have learned to stay ahead of the race by using bots to scrape. While how these bots could be harmful is something worth talking about, it is not the main scope of this article. This article discusses some of the commonly used weapons to fight bots and brings to light their effectiveness in reality.

We come across many developers who claim to have taken measures to prevent their sites from being scraped. A common belief is that these below listed techniques reduce scraping activities significantly on a website. While some of these methods could actually work in concept, we were interested to explore how effective they were in practice.

Most Commonly used techniques to Prevent Scraping:

•    Setting up robots.txt – Surprisingly, this technique is used against malicious bots! Why this wouldn’t work is pretty straight forward – robots.txt is an agreement between websites and search engine bots to prevent search engine bots from accessing sensitive information. No malicious bot (or the scraper behind it) in it’s right mind would obey robots.txt. This is the most ineffective method to prevent scraping.

•    Filtering requests by User agent – The user agent string of a client is set by the client itself. One method is to obtain this from the HTTP header of a request. This way, a request can be filtered even before the content is served to the request. We observed that very few bots (approximately less than 10%), used the default user agent string which belonged to a scraping tool or was an empty string. Once their requests to the website were filtered based on the user agent, it didn’t take too long for scrapers to realize this and change their user agent to that of any well known browser. This method merely stops new bots written by inexperienced scrapers for a few hours.

•    Blacklisting the IP address – Seeking out to an IP blacklisting service is much easier than having to perform the hectic process of capturing more metrics from page requests and analyzing server logs. There are plenty of third party services which maintain a database of blacklisted IPs. In our hunt for a suitable blacklisting service, we found that using a third party DNSBL/RBL service was not effective as these services blacklisted only email spambot servers and were not effective in preventing scraping bots. Less than 2% of scraping bots were detected for one of our customer’s when we did a trial run.

•    Throwing CAPTCHA – A very well know practice to stop bots is to throw CAPTCHA on pages with sensitive content. Although effective against bots, CAPTCHA is thrown to all clients requesting the web page irrespective of whether it is a human or a bot. This method often antagonizes users and hence reduces traffic to the website. Some more insights to the new NO CAPTCHA Re-CAPTCHA by Google can be found in our previous blog post.

•    Honey pot or Honey trap – Honey pots are a brilliant trap mechanism to capture new bots (scrapers who are not well versed with structure of every page) on the website. But, this approach poses a lesser known threat of reducing the page rank on search engines. Here’s why – Search engine bots visit these links and might get trapped accidentally. Even if exceptions to the page were made by disallowing a set of known user agents, the links to the traps might be indexed by a search engine bot. These links are interpreted as dead, irrelevant or fake links by search engines. With more such traps, the ranking of the website decreases considerably. Furthermore, filtering requests based on user agent can exploited as discussed above. In short, honey pots are risky business which must be handled very carefully.

To summarize, these prevention strategies listed are either weak or require constant monitoring and regular maintenance to keep them effective. In practice bots are far more challenging than they actually seem to be.

What to expect in 2015?

With increasing need for scraping, the number of scraping tools and expert scrapers are also increasing which simply means bots are going to be an increasing problem. In fact, the usage of headless browsers i.e, browser like bots which are used to scrape are increasing and scrapers are no longer relying on wget, curl and html parsers. Preventing malicious bots from stealing content without actually disturbing the genuine traffic from humans and search engine bots is just going get harder. By the end of the year, we could infer from our database that almost half of an average website’s traffic is caused by bots. And a whopping 30-40% is caused by malicious bots. We believe this is only going to increase if we do not step up to take action!

p.s. If you think you are facing similar problems, why not request for more information? Also, if you do not have the time or bandwidth for taking such actions, scraping prevention and stopping malicious bots is something we provide as a service. How about a free trial?

Source:http://www.shieldsquare.com/why-common-measures-taken-to-prevent-scraping-arent-effective/

How You Can Identify Buying Preferences of Customers Using Data Mining Techniques

The New Gold Rush: Exploring the Untapped ‘Data Mining’ Reserves of Top 3 Industries

In a bid to reach new moms bang on time, Target knows when you’ll get pregnant. Microsoft knows Return on Investment (ROI) of each of its employee. Pandora knows what’s your current music mood. Amazing, isn’t it?

Call it the stereotype of mathematician nerds or Holy Grail of predictive analysts of modern day, Data Mining is the new gold rush for many industries.

Today, companies are mining data to predict exact actions of their prospective customers. That means, when a huge chunk of customer data is seen through a series of sophisticated, formatted and collective data mining process, it can help create future-ready content of marketing and buying messages, diminishing scope of errors and maximizing customer loyalty.

Also a progressive team of coders and statisticians help push the envelope as far as the marketing and business tactics are concerned by collecting data and mining practices that are empowering.

Mentioned below is a detailed low-down of three such industries (real estate, retail and automobile) where LoginWorks Software has employed the most talented predictive analysts and comprehensive behavioral marketing platforms in the industry. Let’s take a look.

Real Estate Industry Looks Past the Spray-And-Pray Marketing Tactic By Mining User Data.

A supremely competitive market that is to an extent unstructured too, the real estate industry needs to reap the advantageous benefits of data mining. And, we at LoginWorks Softwares understand this extremely well!

Our robust team of knowledge-driven analysts make sure that we predict future trends, process the old data and rank the areas using actionable predictive analytics techniques. By applying a long-term strategy to analyze the trend and to get hold of the influential factors that are invested in buying a property, our data warehouses excels in using classical techniques, such as Neural Network, C&R Tree, linear regression, Multilayer Perception Model and SPSS in order to uncover the hidden knowledge.

By using Big Data as the bedrock of our Predictive Marketing Platform, we help you zero-in on the best possible property available for your interest. Data from more than a dozen of reliable national and international resources to give you the most accurate and up-to-the minute data. Right from extracting a refined database of one’s neighbourhood insights to classic knowledge discovery of meaningful l techniques, our statisticians have proven accuracy. We scientifically predict your data by:

•    Understanding powerful insights that lead to property-buying decisions.
•    Studying properties and ranking them city-wise, based on their predictability of getting sold in the future.
•    Measuring trends at micro level by making use of Home Price Index, Market Strength Indicator, Automated Valuation Model and Investment analytics.

Our marketing platform consists of the mentioned below automated features:

Data Mining Techniques for Customer Relationship Management and Customer Retention in Retail Industry

Data mining to a retailer is what mining gold to a goldsmith would be! Priceless, to say the least. To understand the dynamics and suggestive patterns of customer habits, a retailer is always scouting for information to up his sales and generate future leads from existing and prospective consumers. Hence, sourcing your birth date information from your social media profiles to zooming upon your customer’s buying behaviour in different seasons.

For a retailer, data mining helps the customer information to transform a point of sale into a detailed understanding of (1) Customer Identification; (2) Customer Attraction; (3) Customer Retention; and (4) Customer Development. A retailer can score potential benefits by calculating Return on Investment (ROI) of its customers by:

•    Gaining customer loyalty and long-term association
•    Saving up on huge spend on non-targeted advertising and marketing costs
•    Accessing customer information, which leads to directly targeting the profitable customers
•    Extending product life cycle
•    Uncovering predictable buying patterns that leads to a decrease in spoilage, distribution costs and holding costs

Our specialised marketing team targets customers for retention by applying myriad levels of data mining techniques, in both technological and statistical perspective. We primarily make use of ‘basket’ analysis technique that unearths links between two distinct products and ‘visual’ mining techniques that helps in discovering the power of instant visual association and buying.

Role of Data Mining in Retail Sector

Spinning the Magic Wheel of Data Mining Algorithms in Automobile Industry of Today

Often called as the ‘industries of industries’. the automobile industry of today is robustly engrossed in constructing new plants, and extracting more production levels from existing plants. Like food manufacturing and drug companies, today, automakers are in an urgent need to build sophisticated data extraction processes to keep themselves all equipped for exuberantly expensive and reputation-damaging incidents. If a data analytics by Teradata Corp, a data analytics company, is to be believed then the “auto industry spends $45 billion to $50 billion a year on recalls and warranty claim”. A number potentially damaging for the automobile industry at-large, we reckon!

Hence, it becomes all the more imperative for an automobile company of repute to make use of enhanced methodology of data mining algorithms.

Our analysts would help you to spot insightful patterns, trends, rules, and relationships from scores and scores of information, which is otherwise next to impossible for the human eye to trace or process. Our avant-garde technicians understand that an automative manufacturing industry does not interact on one-to-one basis with the end consumers on a direct basis, hence we step into the picture and use our fully-integrated data mining feature to help you with the:

•    Supply chain procedure (pre-sales and post-sales services, inventory, orders, production plan).
•    Full A-Zee marketing facts and figures(dealers, business centers, social media handling, direct marketing tactics, etc).
•    Manufacturing detailing (car configurations/packages/options codes and description).
•    Customers’ inclination information (websites web-activities).

Impact of Big Data Analytics of Direct Vehicle Pricing

Bottom line

To wrap it all up, it is imperative to understand that the customer data is just as crucial for an actionable insights as your regular listings data. Behavioural data and predictive analysis is where the real deal lies, because at the end of the day it is all about targeting the right audience with the right context!

Move forward in your industry by availing LOGNWORKS SOFTWARES’ comprehensive, integrated, strategic and sophisticated Data Mining Services.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/can-identify-buying-preferences-customers-using-data-mining-techniques/