Data mining has many computational techniques borrowed from different streams such as statistics, information retrieval, machine learning and pattern recognition. When these techniques are to be operated on large datasets, they require fast machines and efficient algorithms.

There are a lot of data mining suites available today in the market. These suites come with a lot of pre-written efficient algorithms for organizing data, using statistical tools, visualizing data, etc. that can be made use of. The programs help us focus on our core skill of data mining rather than on algorithms.

SAS is one such data-mining suite available which helps us with our data mining work. It is the worldwide leader in the business intelligence and software field. We have been using SAS for time series forecasting and on knowledge discovery from databases (KDD) work. Statgraphics and SPSS are the other statistical softwares that we use for statistical operations on small datasets.

Another tool in our bag is the CART from Stalford Systems, which is a GUI decision tree tool that generates reliable predictive models for application in projects such as profiling customers, targeting direct mails and preventing credit card fraud.