Chapter 8. Looking for Relationships Between Fields
The previous chapters have focused on data preparation. You learned how to select and sort cases, how to identify and remove duplicate cases, how to reclassify and filter fields, how to combine different types of data files, and how to derive additional fields. Now that the dataset has been prepared, in this chapter you will learn how to assess the following:
- Relationships between categorical variables
- Relationships between categorical and continuous variables
- Relationships between continuous variables
One major aspect of a data mining project is the development of a model; however, investigating simple relationships among variables can be extremely important in answering questions about what motivated a project. You may find, for example, that certain customer behaviors are associated with weather events, or purchasing specific products is associated with certain demographic characteristics. Although these patterns are not substitutes for...