Statistical Techniques for Forensic Accounting: Understanding the Theory and Application of Data Analysis

5. Data Mining

We are drowning in an ocean of data while starving for knowledge.

—John Naisbitt (Megatrends, 1982)

5.1. Introduction

Data mining or knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is a collection of techniques and algorithms for unraveling patterns concealed in large data-sets. There are voluminous amounts of data in accounting, hence having scalable and efficient methods for finding patterns in data and relationships between data elements is of high value. The abundance of data in accounting, coupled with the need for powerful data analysis, is often described as a data rich but information poor situation. As the amount of available data increases, manual interpretation of data or assessing information from data has become more tedious, ...