Data Mining and the US Government Essay - 3950 Words

Data Mining and the US Government Introduction On the morning of September 11, 2001, millions of Americans, and many more around the world, woke up to heart-wrenching news of a horrific magnitude. Two planes had collided into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, a third rammed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and yet a fourth crash-landed in Philadelphia. All victims of this carefully planned act of terrorism, several hundreds of innocent lives were lost in the direct assaults on the planes, a couple of thousand more were injured or killed from the damage caused by the attacks, and hundreds more were sacrificed in the rescue attempts.[1] It is unthinkable that such a large scale operation could have been†¦show more content†¦What is Data Mining? Data mining is essentially the ability to discover new information by exploring through various databases of existing information. According to Laura and Jack Cook, data mining facilitates the discovery of previously unknown relationships among the data. †¦These operations present results that users already intuitively knew existed in the database.[2] As an example, let us take a school system consisting of three databases: one which stores the student profiles consisting of name and identification number, another to store student grades based on identification number, and the last one stores all the transactions at the bookstore through the student identification card. This is a simple example, but it should illustrate our point. Alone, the separate databases might not tell us much. With data mining techniques, the process might be able to tell us that in a particular school year, students of a certain ethnic background obtained above a 3.0 GPA, or that the bookstore sold mostl y engineering books to students last year, or even that students who obtained above a 3.0 GPA were ones who bought engineering books. More specifically, the technology might be smart enough to associate that John Doe from Ireland had a 3.32 GPA in his engineering classes, even though he did not buy any engineering books from the bookstore. This type of technology is very powerful source ofShow MoreRelatedIs Data Mining Violating Our Privacy And Rights? Why Are Companies Still Collecting Our Personal Information?1431 Words   |  6 Pagesaccidentally donated data of patients. This means that patient’s social security numbers, addresses, medical records, and other personal information, were given away without patients’ permission or consent. At that moment you realize that all your personal information is out there for everyone to see and use; and there is nothing you can do about it. The collection of personal information is called data mining, and is collected through large online databases. The real question is that data mining violatingRead MoreGS 1140 A Look at Data Mining990 Words   |  4 PagesYour life? â€Å"A Look into Data Mining† Today with the ever growing use of computers in the world, information is constantly moving from one place to another. What is this information, who is it about, and who is using it will be discussed in the following paper. The collecting, interpreting, and determination of use of this information has come to be known as data mining. This term known as data mining has been around only for a short time but the actual collection of data has been happening for centuriesRead MoreOutrage over the NSAs Data Collection is Hypocritical in the Publics Acceptance of Data Mining by Other Companies1701 Words   |  7 PagesOutrage Over the NSAs Data Collection Is Hypocritical in The Publics Acceptance of Data Mining by Other Companies. 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