Publications

Interesting article in Digitrends, online magazine for Interactive
Marketers, highlighting problems in Mining the Dirty Data.

Excerpt:
Against the Grain,
Dirty Data Delivers Dead-End Data Mining
By Gary Arlen, Senior Consulting Editor, Digitrends
(from Digitrends, Spring 2000)

People change. They're fickle. They're inconsistent. And they
lie. Or at least they mislead.

Hey, why am I saying "they", I mean "I"? And probably you, too!
Case in point: Autobytel.com recently spammed me with a

     "Dear Valued Customer" reminder notice about a 40,000-mile checkup
      for a 1996 Mustang. According to its records, "I either own
      or have submitted" a purchase request to Autobytel for that
      car. Since I've never owned a Mustang (neither bought online
      nor via any other source), the best I could figure is that
      several years ago, in its earliest days, Autobytel gave me a
      trade show demo or I tested the service from home. Perhaps I
      innocently toyed around with buying a Ford, but the
      transaction was abandoned.

See the full article at

http://www.digitrends.net/digitrends/dtonline/arlen/arlen061600.shtml

(thanks to Carl Brenner, cbrenner@lifeminders.com for pointing this
article)