Episode 8 - Data Mining

The eighth episode of Digital Tomorrow focuses on data mining. Today, our lives are dominated by data that records everyday facts and events. We live in a world of technologies that capture data, from supermarket purchases to credit card transactions. Businesses also produce data, store it and manage it.

Pepe Moder discusses this with Fosca Giannotti, Director of Research at the Institute of Information Science and Technology of the CNR, founder of the Pisa KDD Lab and coordinator of SoBigData, an ecosystem of ten European research centres on interdisciplinary data science. Mirko Lalli, founder and CEO of The Data Appeal Studio, a company that analyses online data and extracts value from it thanks to a proprietary digital technology based on artificial intelligence, will also intervene.

The episode begins with a question: what does data look like? Over time, data has evolved in many forms thanks to the evolution of computer science: data can be text, such as the digitisation of books and documents from libraries and archives, as well as messages sent via Whatsapp. There is also the so-called 'semi-structured' data, such as web searches, vehicle GPS and mobile phones that keep track of where we are and who we are talking to.

How is data analysed? There are different techniques to do this, such as those that allow the discovery of patterns or groups of similar behaviour, which are very useful for marketing profiling, but there are also techniques related to predictive methods, which start by studying the past in order to build useful models for the future.

What are the benefits for SMEs? The first benefit is the ability to make better decisions based on the insights emerging from data analysis. Businesses can draw a lot of useful information, e.g., from digital channels but also from reputation platforms in order to analyse feedback, reviews and ideas from users on hundreds of different channels.

Interested in discovering all the benefits of data mining for businesses? Check out the episode!