In this chapter, you've learned some fundamentals about data mining algorithms. You learned that Microsoft Analysis Services provides nine algorithms for data mining. Data mining algorithms are divided into five categories based on their functionality. You also learned that a data mining solution is not a one-way solution. It is a circular life cycle that starts with problem definition, then data preparation, continues to model design and implementation, followed by testing the results and deployment, and finally finding the next problem.

We went through two common problems that could be solved with descriptive data mining algorithms, namely the analysis of existing bike buyers and market-basket analysis. For the analysis of existing bike buyers, we used the Microsoft Decision Tree algorithm that provided a tree of decisions made based on the value of the variables. You've learned how to analyze the result set of an algorithm in mining model viewers. The market-basket analysis utilized...