Jim Miller, Senior Solutions Architect at Perficient, recently wrote a blog on the importance of discovering relationships within data and how this can be achieved using SPSS Modeler.
The discovering of relationships within data (between fields) is an important part of any data mining project (in the Crisp-DM methodology, this is described as part of the “Data Understanding” stage).
This “relationship discovery” is part of developing a predictive model but is also helpful in answering specific business questions -perhaps even what originally motivated the project!
Typically, relationships between the target and the predictors are investigated (you want to see which fields are strongly associated with your target and which fields are not) and the methods used for examining relationships (between fields) depend on the “measurement levels” defined for the fields in question (I’ve debated the concept of measurement levels in previous posts and plenty of information is available online on this topic if you’re interested).
To read Jim’s full blog post, click here.
