Data mining using neural networks for large credit card record sites

Data mining using neural networks has been applied in various financial fields such as risk mitigation, missing data filling, fraud detection, and customer profile classification etc. This master thesis work aims to develop methodologies to mine large sets of records and in particular to fill missing data in these records. The steps include data cleansing, data selection, data preprocessing, data representation, data clustering and finally the missing data filling. Furthermore, this work designs algorithms to evaluate the supervised neural networks\u27 performance, which is helpful for the future research on data prediction and classification. A case study based on a large data set of credit card records, which contains incomplete records, is performed to demonstrate that the proposed algorithms and their implementations accomplish the task of filling missing data in such records

New Approach for Market Intelligence Using Artificial and Computational Intelligence

Small and medium sized retailers are central to the private sector and a vital contributor to economic growth, but often they face enormous challenges in unleashing their full potential. Financial pitfalls, lack of adequate access to markets, and difficulties in exploiting technology have prevented them from achieving optimal productivity. Market Intelligence (MI) is the knowledge extracted from numerous internal and external data sources, aimed at providing a holistic view of the state of the market and influence marketing related decision-making processes in real-time. A related, burgeoning phenomenon and crucial topic in the field of marketing is Artificial Intelligence (AI) that entails fundamental changes to the skillssets marketers require. A vast amount of knowledge is stored in retailers’ point-of-sales databases. The format of this data often makes the knowledge they store hard to access and identify. As a powerful AI technique, Association Rules Mining helps to identify frequently associated patterns stored in large databases to predict customers’ shopping journeys. Consequently, the method has emerged as the key driver of cross-selling and upselling in the retail industry. At the core of this approach is the Market Basket Analysis that captures knowledge from heterogeneous customer shopping patterns and examines the effects of marketing initiatives. Apriori, that enumerates frequent itemsets purchased together (as market baskets), is the central algorithm in the analysis process. Problems occur, as Apriori lacks computational speed and has weaknesses in providing intelligent decision support. With the growth of simultaneous database scans, the computation cost increases and results in dramatically decreasing performance. Moreover, there are shortages in decision support, especially in the methods of finding rarely occurring events and identifying the brand trending popularity before it peaks. As the objective of this research is to find intelligent ways to assist small and medium sized retailers grow with MI strategy, we demonstrate the effects of AI, with algorithms in data preprocessing, market segmentation, and finding market trends. We show with a sales database of a small, local retailer how our Åbo algorithm increases mining performance and intelligence, as well as how it helps to extract valuable marketing insights to assess demand dynamics and product popularity trends. We also show how this results in commercial advantage and tangible return on investment. Additionally, an enhanced normal distribution method assists data pre-processing and helps to explore different types of potential anomalies.Små och medelstora detaljhandlare är centrala aktörer i den privata sektorn och bidrar starkt till den ekonomiska tillväxten, men de möter ofta enorma utmaningar i att uppnå sin fulla potential. Finansiella svårigheter, brist på marknadstillträde och svårigheter att utnyttja teknologi har ofta hindrat dem från att nå optimal produktivitet. Marknadsintelligens (MI) består av kunskap som samlats in från olika interna externa källor av data och som syftar till att erbjuda en helhetssyn av marknadsläget samt möjliggöra beslutsfattande i realtid. Ett relaterat och växande fenomen, samt ett viktigt tema inom marknadsföring är artificiell intelligens (AI) som ställer nya krav på marknadsförarnas färdigheter. Enorma mängder kunskap finns sparade i databaser av transaktioner samlade från detaljhandlarnas försäljningsplatser. Ändå är formatet på dessa data ofta sådant att det inte är lätt att tillgå och utnyttja kunskapen. Som AI-verktyg erbjuder affinitetsanalys en effektiv teknik för att identifiera upprepade mönster som statistiska associationer i data lagrade i stora försäljningsdatabaser. De hittade mönstren kan sedan utnyttjas som regler som förutser kundernas köpbeteende. I detaljhandel har affinitetsanalys blivit en nyckelfaktor bakom kors- och uppförsäljning. Som den centrala metoden i denna process fungerar marknadskorgsanalys som fångar upp kunskap från de heterogena köpbeteendena i data och hjälper till att utreda hur effektiva marknadsföringsplaner är. Apriori, som räknar upp de vanligt förekommande produktkombinationerna som köps tillsammans (marknadskorgen), är den centrala algoritmen i analysprocessen. Trots detta har Apriori brister som algoritm gällande låg beräkningshastighet och svag intelligens. När antalet parallella databassökningar stiger, ökar också beräkningskostnaden, vilket har negativa effekter på prestanda. Dessutom finns det brister i beslutstödet, speciellt gällande metoder att hitta sällan förekommande produktkombinationer, och i att identifiera ökande popularitet av varumärken från trenddata och utnyttja det innan det når sin höjdpunkt. Eftersom målet för denna forskning är att hjälpa små och medelstora detaljhandlare att växa med hjälp av MI-strategier, demonstreras effekter av AI med hjälp av algoritmer i förberedelsen av data, marknadssegmentering och trendanalys. Med hjälp av försäljningsdata från en liten, lokal detaljhandlare visar vi hur Åbo-algoritmen ökar prestanda och intelligens i datautvinningsprocessen och hjälper till att avslöja värdefulla insikter för marknadsföring, framför allt gällande dynamiken i efterfrågan och trender i populariteten av produkterna. Ytterligare visas hur detta resulterar i kommersiella fördelar och konkret avkastning på investering. Dessutom hjälper den utvidgade normalfördelningsmetoden i förberedelsen av data och med att hitta olika slags anomalier

Case Teknos Group Oy Paint Store Transaction Data

Companies operating in challenging business environments, characterized by the proliferation of disruptive technologies and intensifying competition, are obliged to re-evaluate their strategic approach. This has become the norm in the retail industry and traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Particularly local market players with scarce resources are looking into alternative solutions to delivering a unique customer experience with the intention to preserve their profitability. Customer experience has been an integral topic within academic research for decades, and has also substantiated its value in pragmatic contexts. Recent developments in this field have triggered the constitution of customer experience management functions, which aim to adopt a holistic approach to the customer experience. This enforces a quantitative perspective highlighting the role of customer transaction data. Association analysis is one of the most well-known methodology used to detect underlying patterns hidden in large transaction data sets. It uses machine learning techniques to firstly identify frequently purchased product combinations and secondly, to discover concealed associations among the products. The association rules derived and evaluated during the process can potentially reveal implicit, yet interesting customer insight, which may translate into actionable implications. The practical consequences in the framework of this study are referred to as sales increasing strategies, namely targeted marketing, cross-selling and space management. This thesis uses Python programming language in Anaconda’s Jupyter Notebook environment to perform association analysis on customer transaction data provided by the case company. The Apriori algorithm is applied to constitute the frequent itemsets and generate association rules between these itemsets. The interestingness and actionability of the rules will be evaluated based on various scoring measures computed for each rule. The outcomes of this study contribute to finding interesting customer insight and actionable recommendations for the case company to support their success in demanding market conditions. Furthermore, this research describes and discusses the relative success factors from the theoretical point of view and demonstrates the process of association rule mining when applied to customer transaction data

A geographic knowledge discovery approach to property valuation

This thesis involves an investigation of how knowledge discovery can be applied in the area Geographic Information Science. In particular, its application in the area of property valuation in order to reveal how different spatial entities and their interactions affect the price of the properties is explored. This approach is entirely data driven and does not require previous knowledge of the area applied. To demonstrate this process, a prototype system has been designed and implemented. It employs association rule mining and associative classification algorithms to uncover any existing inter-relationships and perform the valuation. Various algorithms that perform the above tasks have been proposed in the literature. The algorithm developed in this work is based on the Apriori algorithm. It has been however, extended with an implementation of a ‘Best Rule’ classification scheme based on the Classification Based on Associations (CBA) algorithm. For the modelling of geographic relationships a graph-theoretic approach has been employed. Graphs have been widely used as modelling tools within the geography domain, primarily for the investigation of network-type systems. In the current context, the graph reflects topological and metric relationships between the spatial entities depicting general spatial arrangements. An efficient graph search algorithm has been developed, based on the Djikstra shortest path algorithm that enables the investigation of relationships between spatial entities beyond first degree connectivity. A case study with data from three central London boroughs has been performed to validate the methodology and algorithms, and demonstrate its effectiveness for computer aided property valuation. In addition, through the case study, the influence of location in the value of properties in those boroughs has been examined. The results are encouraging as they demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and algorithms, provided that the data is appropriately pre processed and is of high quality

Modeling and evaluation of knowledge discovery in wholesale and retail industry

x, 168 leaves : ill. ; 29 cm.Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-168).This thesis demonstrates an enterprise-wide Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process CRISP for wholesale and retail industry, which can facilitate business decision-making processes and improve corporate profits. While part of the KDD process described here is well documented, the modeling and evaluations used in the commercial products is not reported in literature. Hence, the focus of this thesis is on the development and evaluation of models used in the knowledge discovery. Description of the underlying models will help the decision makers better understand the quality and limitations of the KDD process. The usefulness of KDD process CRISP is illustrated for two companies, i.e. a multinational retailer and a small chain of specialty grocery stores. The detailed steps highlight business understanding, data exploration, data preparation. data modeling, results evaluation, and interpretation. The methodologies applied in this thesis include prediction, clustering and association to discover knowledge about products/suppliers, consumers, and business units

Front Matter - Soft Computing for Data Mining Applications

Efficient tools and algorithms for knowledge discovery in large data sets have been devised during the recent years. These methods exploit the capability of computers to search huge amounts of data in a fast and effective manner. However, the data to be analyzed is imprecise and afflicted with uncertainty. In the case of heterogeneous data sources such as text, audio and video, the data might moreover be ambiguous and partly conflicting. Besides, patterns and relationships of interest are usually vague and approximate. Thus, in order to make the information mining process more robust or say, human-like methods for searching and learning it requires tolerance towards imprecision, uncertainty and exceptions. Thus, they have approximate reasoning capabilities and are capable of handling partial truth. Properties of the aforementioned kind are typical soft computing. Soft computing techniques like Genetic

Uncertainty Management of Intelligent Feature Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are envisioned to revolutionize the paradigm of monitoring complex real-world systems at a very high resolution. However, the deployment of a large number of unattended sensor nodes in hostile environments, frequent changes of environment dynamics, and severe resource constraints pose uncertainties and limit the potential use of WSN in complex real-world applications. Although uncertainty management in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is well developed and well investigated, its implications in wireless sensor environments are inadequately addressed. This dissertation addresses uncertainty management issues of spatio-temporal patterns generated from sensor data. It provides a framework for characterizing spatio-temporal pattern in WSN. Using rough set theory and temporal reasoning a novel formalism has been developed to characterize and quantify the uncertainties in predicting spatio-temporal patterns from sensor data. This research also uncovers the trade-off among the uncertainty measures, which can be used to develop a multi-objective optimization model for real-time decision making in sensor data aggregation and samplin