Week 8 initial post

This week we are focusing on data mining. I have to be honest before I started this post I had never heard of the term data mining, so I was very interested to learn more about it. According to statsoft.com, data mining is "an analytic process designed to explore data in search of consistent patterns and/or systematic relationships between variables" (2017). A simpler way to this of this concept is to think of the goal bing predicting.

Data mining has also been referred to as "knowledge discovery in databases." With the application of this concept to education teachers can predict student performance before they set foot in a classroom and develop an intervention strategy to keep them on course. Data mining helps teachers access student data, product achievement, and find students who may need extra attention. 

Data mining can be used in improving student models or models that detail information about student's knowledge, motivation, metacognition, and attitudes (Baker). Another application is in studying the pedagogical support provided by leaning software.

Another software is for scientific discovery about learning and learners scientific