a Data Mining Toolkit

www.xlminer.com

XLMiner

QuantLink Solutions Pvt. Ltd. www.quantlink.com

XLMiner a quick tour

Here is a short demo of XLMiner.
Let us use a simple example:
a bank sends mailers to its customers, offering a special deal on Personal Loans. In its previous campaign, it got only about 9% positive response.
Objective: How to target customers for increased conversion rate.

In other words, the question to address is:

what profile indicates a high-potential customer?

XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

XLMiner a quick tour

Past campaign data will be used to train the data mining model This is called supervised learning in DataMining terms Lets see how to build a model and use it for improving the response rate.

XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

Data description
Our past campaign data has the following customer attributes: Customer ID Customers Age Professional Experience Family Income Credit Card average annual spending Education Level #appliances owned Did this customer accept past campaign offer?
The last variable is the known outcome of the past campaign. Our Data Mining model will use this for Supervised Learning.

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XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

A view of the data

This is what the data looks like:

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The variable labeled as PersLoan? is binary: 0 means the customer was not interested in the Personal Loan. 1 means the customer was interested.

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the Data Mining Process

Partition the data into Training & Validation Partitions Fit the Model on Training Partition only Obtain results, see if they look good enough

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Check if they are good for Validation data too!

Study the outputs for validation data

Try out several alternative models

Choose and deploy the best model

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Start the analysis

Lets get going with XLMiner. Notice that XLMiner is as easy to use as Excel! All we need to do is use the friendly menus. We follow just three simple steps to fit a model and see the outputs!

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XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

Step 1: Partition the data

Well create two partitions by choosing the records randomly. The Training Partition will be used for fitting the model. The Validation partition will be used for checking if the model gives a good fit for another piece of known data.

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XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

Partitioned Data
XLMiner creates a Partition Sheet that shows the data split into Two partitions.

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Easy Hyperlinks on the Navigator facilitate viewing of either partition

XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolkit

Step 2: Fitting the Model

This is a Classification Problem where we want to predict customers as likely / not likely to take a Personal Loan.
We select input (predictor) variables here

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Lets use one of the available techniques Classification Tree.

Later we can use other Classification techniques.

and the outcome variable here

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Step 2: Fitting the Model

The model fit guides us through easy wizard-like steps. In these steps we choose techniquespecific parameters and the output options. In the end, we click Finish to produce the results.

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Step 3: Understanding the Outputs

The friendly Output Navigator lets us go over all the outputs.

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The Summaries show us the classification error percentages i.e. how well the model is predicting

Other outputs (like the Tree here) will tell us the decision rules that the model is suggesting.

Many other diagnostic outputs are available depending on options we choose.

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Output 1: Validation Summary

First, we look at how well the model predicted for the Validation data set

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In the Training data where we already knew the outcome, 156 will buy were predicted correctly, and 38 wrongly. 1801 Wont buy were predicted correctly and merely 5 wrongly.

Here are the corresponding error percentages. The errors are not very small but could still indicate a workable model.

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Output 2: the decision rule

Here is the Classification Tree that gives the easy-tounderstand and implement Decision Rules
Cut-off points for different variables decide whether to go Left or Right

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0: not likely to buy 1: likely to buy

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the decision rule in table form

The same decision rule as shown visually, can be converted into the table below. This is useful for implementing it in your information systems.

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Output 3: more details

Each technique (Classification Tree in this case) has additional helpful outputs The example here shows the Prune Log how the percentage error reduced by pruning the tree

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Output 4: the Lift Chart

Lift tells us how much better the model did compared to a random targeting of customers. This is one of the most important outputs.

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With our Tree model, we get a much superior result. In less than 500 mailers sent to high probability customers, we would get nearly 170 successes!

If customers were targeted randomly, we would expect this outcome. For instance, 1000 mailers would probably yield less than 100 customers.

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Output 5: the Detailed report

The Validation data is scored in detail as shown below. Scoring means using the fitted model to classify each record of the data.

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Probability of success is computed for each record. This is what helps XLMiner suggest selective records (customers) to target. Predicted values can be seen against the actuals here.

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Try several techniques!

That was just one of the many techniques in XLMiner Classification Tree. A typical Data Mining exercise involves several alternative approaches on the same data. This can be either with different techniques, or with different parameters, or both. Comparing multiple approaches lets us assess which model to finally choose for implementation.

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Rich repertoire of techniques!

XLMiner supports a comprehensive array of supervised learning procedures:

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Multiple Linear Regression Logistic Regression Classification & Regression Trees Neural Networks k Nearest Neighbors Nave Bayes Classifier Discriminant Analysis

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Rich repertoire of techniques!

... and several other features in Unsupervised Learning, Data Reduction and Exploration:

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Principal Components Analysis k-means Clustering Hierarchical Clustering Self-organizing Maps (coming soon) Affinity Market Basket Analysis Here are some sample outputs from these methods

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sample output - Dendrogram

Hierarchical Clustering produces a dendrogram an excellent visual representation of Cluster formation.

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Height of the bars is a measure of dissimilarity in the clusters that are merging into one.

Smaller clusters agglomerate into bigger ones, with least possible loss of cohesiveness at each stage.

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sample output cluster predictions

Cluster Analysis has many powerful uses like Market Segmentation. We can view individual records predicted cluster membership.

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sample output BoxPlots

XLMiner supports powerful visualization. The example here shows BoxPlots of two variables.
Cluster 2 clearly shows higher Income & Credit Card spend than Cluster 1. This is an excellent aid to characterizing the clusters

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sample output Scatter Plots

Matrix Scatterplots in XLMiner give a visual insight into relationship among variables.

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sample output Association Rules

For Market Basket Analysis XLMiner produces easy-to-read Association Rules
Rules are explained in simple English! Each rule tells us which offerings will go well together

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 and thats not all!

XLMiner has handy utilities for Data handling: Missing data treatment Transforming categorical data Binning continuous data Sampling from Databases Scoring to Databases

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XLMiner => Versatility!

This was a quick demonstration of just a few things XLMiner can do. It can do lots more. It is comprehensive in coverage, like the best DM products around. Get your free download for evaluation at

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www.xlminer.ncom

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XLMiner => Simplicity!

Daryl Pregibon had said Data Mining is Statistics at Scale and Speed. Youll find that XLMiner is Statistics at Scale, Speed and Simplicity! If you know to use Excel, you already know XLMiner. You can get started in minutes.

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XLMiner => Great Value!

Several comprehensive DM products are many times more expensive. For exploring how Data Mining will work for you, XLMiner provides a great start!

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What others say

The American Statistician reviewed XLMiner along with
other reputed products in the November 2003 issue This is what it had to say:

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An easy to use an excellent, inexpensive add-on that greatly expands the capabilities of Excel.
XLMiners documentation is remarkably good

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More Resources
For your initiation into Data Mining: Free evaluation download Online Courses at www.statistics.com

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Case Book in the making Technical references on product website

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Thank you for viewing this Demo!

XLMiner - the Data Mining Toolset for the Managers of Tomorrow

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