Data Mining Plugin for Excel 2013

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Data mining option is a plugin for Excel 2013. You can build powerful mining models and even work with a range of data in excel sheet to exploit the power of mining in a simple and intuitive way.

Download the data mining plugin for office 2013 from the link below.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35578

Once installed, you can see the ribbon with various choices as shown below.

 

The ribbon has

1. Data Preparation

2. Data Modeling

3. Accuracy and Validation

4. Model Usage

5. Management

6. Connection

We start with Connection. Go through the wizard to connect to Analysis Services.

For people familiar with mining, the wizards are a breeze. It gives description of what the model does.

DATA PREPARATION

Explore Data allows you to choose a single column of data and will allow bucketing. You can choose the number of buckets. You can also add a new column back to your data range defying the group into which data belongs .i.e. you start with one column and end up having another column with ranges defined.

Clean data will help in removing the outliers by either deleting it or changing value of outlier to a minimum / maximum specified.

Sample data helps create a sample dataset from the bigger sample. You can input either a percentage or a fixed number of rows. It will then split data into “selected data” and “unselected data” tabs.

DATA MODELING

When you start creating a data model, the dataset is automatically split into a training set and a testing set. Wizard provides option to enable for browsing and drill through.

Classify and estimate provides values of another column based on column selected

Clustering gives mean, standard deviation, probability for the population and a feature to compare between clusters.

Similarly Associate and Forecast provides data for unknown time periods.

Advanced wizard helps you create a mining model or add a model to a structure.

It is easy to use data mining features in Excel. You will have to do some prep work to understand what is mining and the uses of mining models.