Professor Harry Wechsler

Department of Computer Science

George Mason University

Fairfax, VA 22030

e-mail : wechsler@cs.gmu.edu

web : http://cs.gmu.edu/~wechsler/

           (703) 993-1533 (office)

(703) 993-1530 (sec)

(703)993-1710 (fax)

 

GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

       FALL   '2005

       CS 750 Theory and Applications of Data Mining

      

      Class Information

001     70103  R  4:30 p.m.     7:10 p.m.  ENT 274

Prerequisites

CS 450 (“databases”), CS 580 (“AI”)   or  permission of instructor

Office Hours

Thursday 3:15 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. or by appointment (SITE II - Rm. 461)

 

Textbook

Introduction to Data Mining, Tan, Steinbach and Kumar,

Pearson Addison Wesley, 2006

web site for textbook slides  : http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kumar/dmbook/

 

            Reference

Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques, Han and Kamber, Morgan Kaufmann, 2001

web site for textbook slides  : http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~han/bk

 

 WEKA web site for data mining software

 

http://www.togaware.com/datamining/survivor/Weka.html

 

Background for Pattern Recognition and Classification

 

http://research.cs.tamu.edu/prism/lectures.htm

 

UCI Machine Learning Repository Content Summary

 

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~mlearn/MLSummary.html

 

References

1.  V. Cherkassky and F. Mulier, Learning from Data : Concepts, Theory, and Methods,  John Wiley,   1999.

 

         2.   D. Pyle, Data Preparation for Data Mining, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.

 

3.  R. Baeza-Yates and B. Ribeiro-Neto,   Modern Information Retrieval,  Addison-Wesley, 1999.

  

4.    T. Hastie, R. Tibshirani, and J. Friedman, The Elements of Statistical Learning : Data Mining, Inference, and Prediction, Springer, 2001.

 

 

          Course Description

Concepts  and techniques in data mining and their multidisciplinary applications. Topics include data warehousing and databases, data cleaning and transformation, pattern transformation and data compression, concept description, association and correlation rules, data classification and predictive modeling, clustering, performance analysis and scalability, data mining in advanced database systems including text, audio and images, and emerging themes and future challenges related to biometrics and the semantic web.  Term team project and topical review are required.

Motivation

The explosive growth in generating, collecting and storing data has generated an urgent need for new techniques and automated tools that can intelligently assist us in transforming the vast amounts of data into useful information and knowledge. Data mining is a multidisciplinary field, drawing from areas including AI, database technology, data visualization, information retrieval, high performance computing, machine learning, mathematical programming, neural networks, pattern recognition, statistical learning theory, and statistics.  The course provides the graduate students the opportunity to learn about the management and use of large data repositories based upon a multidisciplinary approach.

Goals

The objective of this course is to introduce graduate students to current research, technological advances and trends in data mining.   Data mining, which supports knowledge discovery in databases (KDD), helps with the automated extraction of patterns representing knowledge implicitly stored in large databases, data warehouses, and other massive information repositories.  The course focuses on issues related to the feasibility, usefulness, efficiency, and scalability of automated techniques for the discovery of patterns hidden in large databases.  Students will be exposed to the above topics via lectures and reading assignments, including recent journal and conference papers. Students are expected to complete a term project and to make an in depth presentation on a topic related to data mining.   As data mining has matured, the field is now advancing on three new fronts: (i) ability to mine data in real time; (ii) predictive analysis rather than merely explain past trends; and (iii) analyze messy “unstructured” data.

 

 

 

Follow – Up Studies with Professor Wechsler :  1. CS 667 – Biometrics – Spring 2006;  2. CS 775 /  IT 844  -- Pattern Recognition – Spring 2007; 3. Certificate in Biometrics; 4. PhD dissertation.

 

Grading

(Team) Term Project à  50 %.

Science and Technology REVIEW and Class Participation  à 25%

Final Exam: December 15 à 25%

Term Project

Students are working in teams on the term project.
Scope and range for the project has to be agreed with the instructor.
Task involves meaningful functionality and significant amounts of data.
Project includes the  following  STEPS :


1. Problem definition, requirements analysis and conceptual design.
2. Data selection / sampling. // visualization //
3. Cleaning and integration / Preprocessing // visualization //
4. Data transformation / Data Reduction // visualization //
5. Data Mining // visualization //
6. Modeling, test & evaluation, and performance assessment // visualization //
7. Knowledge discovery // visualization //

Use domain knowledge and visualization for all the steps.

Iteratively refine the quality and scope of your project

Reviews and class presentations are conducted stepwise
throughout the course (see tentative schedule). First a draft for each step is expected
the week the STEP is listed in the tentative schedule listed below.
Based upon feedback received in class the same step is completed and
presented again the following week.

Final (In Class)  Project Presentation (SLIDES) (about 30 minutes)

1.  Survey / Literature Review of  (a) application
and (b) task / functionality, data mining (STEP 5)
and model selection (“training strategy”).

2.    Brief   Description of STEPS 1 – 7.

3.    Performance Evaluation and Assessment of your project.

Final Project Report (HARD COPY) (at most 12 pages)

         Submit Technical Report (TR) that covers your Final  Project  Presentation.

 

Tentative Schedule

September 1

Ch. 1: Introduction – Data Warehouses, Databases, Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, and the Semantic Web (http://www.w3.org/2001/sw)

- Appendix C – Probability and Statistics -

September 8

Ch. 2: Data    STEP 1

- Appendix A – Linear Algebra  -

September 15

Ch. 3: Exploring Data

- Appendix E  – Optimization -

September 22 –

September 29

Ch. 4:  Classification (Part I)

Appendix D  –Regression -

STEPS 2 – 3 <September 22>

October 6

            Ch. 5 :  Classification (Part II)

 

October 13

Feature extraction and selection & Data reduction

Appendix B – Dimensionality Reduction

October 20

            Ch. 6: Associations (Part I)

STEP 4

 

October 27

Ch. 7: Associations (Part II).

November 3 - 10

Ch. 8 - 9: Cluster Analysis.

STEP 5  <November 10>

November 17

Ch. 10: Anomaly Detection

STEPS  6 - 7

November 17

Biometrics

November 24

Thanksgiving

December 1

FINAL  PROJECT   PRESENTATION

December 8

FINAL  PROJECT   PRESENTATION

- REVIEW for FINAL EXAM -