Features

The previous KDnuggets Poll asked about Industries/fields where you currently apply data mining. Based on 608 votes, the results show wide distribution of data mining across over a dozen main application areas. The most popular ones are

• Banking (77) 13%
• Biology/Genetics/Proteomics (32) 5%
• Direct Marketing/Fundraising (42) 7%
• eCommerce/Web (53) 9%
• Entertainment (10) 2%
• Fraud Detection (51) 8%
• Insurance (36) 6%
• Investment/Stocks (17) 3%
• Manufacturing (28) 5%
• Pharmaceuticals (31) 5%
• Retail (36) 6%
• Scientific data (51) 8%
• Security (14) 2%
• Supply Chain Analysis (21) 3%
• Telecommunications (56) 9%
• Other (44) 7%
• None (9) 1%

To see trends over a year period, we can also compare to a similar poll in May of 2001, which asked, Where did you apply data mining in the past year (see www.kdnuggets.com/polls/2001/application_areas.htm).

The results are not scientific because there were more choices in 2002 poll and more people participated in the poll, but we can still observe some trends by comparing the relative popularity of applications, i.e. percentages of votes.

Application areas with significant declines in popularity from 2001 to 2002 are

• Banking (from 17% in 2001 to 13% in 2002)
• eCommerce/Web (from 15% to 9%)
• Biology/Genetics (from 8% to 5%)
• Investment/Stocks (from 4% to 3%)

• Fraud Detection (stayed at 8%)
• Insurance (stayed at 6%)
• Pharmaceuticals (stayed at 5%)
• Retail (stayed at 6%)
• Scientific data (stayed at 8%)