The Lure of Statistics in Data Mining

The field of Data Mining like Statistics concerns itself with "learning from data" or "turning data into<br>information". For statisticians the term "Data mining" has a pejorative meaning. Instead of finding<br>useful patterns in large volumes of data as in the case of Statistics, data mining has the connotation of<br>searching for data to fit preconceived ideas. Here we try to discuss the similarities and differences as<br>well as the relationships between statisticians and data miners. This article is intended to bridge some of<br>the gap between the people of these two communities.