UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA SCHOOL OF QUANTITATIVE SCIENCES COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES [ SQIT 3033 ] KNOWLEDGE ACQUISTION IN DECISION

MAKING

ASSIGNMENT 1

INSTRUCTOR EN. IZWAN NIZAL MOHD SHAHARANEE DUE DATE :- 06 MARCH 2014 PREPARED BY :LIM KOON LONG 211853

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Introduction

Data mining is a new data analysis technique which able to discover the various patterns stored in the historical data. In order to process those thousands of data with human ability, data mining may act as the catalyst for enhancing the business process by figure out the possible failure patterns and try to avoid it also the success patterns so that we can explore it with the correct way. Data mining technique requires a large probability database of the past cases to be analyzed. This technique can be uses widely in business filed including market segmentation, fraud detection, credit risk analysis as well as much other application. Most of the organizations will store a huge amount of generated data during their daily operating activities which may take it as reference for future operating. By analysis those data, we may get the patterns indicate the effectively of various process, but great majority usually buried within the data and difficult to get it. With the presence of data mining tools, we can easy to discovering the wealth of information that contained in the data.

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Application of data mining in construction issues Reduce the construction cost overrun Cost performance on the construction project usually will be the main measure of the success of the project. From the research of Dominic D. Ahiaga-Dagbui and Simon D. Smith, they defined that there are several steps to carry the analysis. 2.1 Drilling down the database To start the analysis, the initial step is drilling down into the database to find out what might be the possible useful in modeling the final cost. 2.2 Cluster analysis and purposive sampling Create the groups of project cases that were similar, without significant missing data or extreme values and representative of entire data set. Using a clusters containing about all the projects success completed within a past

period. A number of project cases were selected using stratified random sampling method. And it will be used for independent testing of final models. While other remaining data split for training and testing of the models. 2.3 Deciding predictor in modeling exercise Decide the predictors that to be use and remove the predictors which not likely to be a good predictors or redundant predictors that contain same information at another level of variables when model in practice. 2.4 Normalize the cost values Cost values then been normalized to a baseline with the selected base year. Other numerical predictors were further standardized to zScores. Binary coding system been chosen to convert the categorical variables input to coding. 2.5 Cost model development Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) selected for the actual modeling since its ability to cope with non-linear relationship and categorical variables. Once the final model was developed, the overall network performance was measured using the correlation coefficient between predicted and output values as well as the Sum of Squares (SOS) of errors. To assess the predictors contribution, sensitivity analysis was performed. At last, predictions and absolute percentage errors (APE) achieved and the best overall model obtained.

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Conclusion

Data mining in modern construction management had become the key business tool nowadays. With data mining , it can improve construction performance and help those construction firm to transform their data into decision support system for further improvement and increase their competitive advantage.

Reference

(n.d.). Retrieved March 04, 2014, from DATA MINING: A CONCEPTUAL OVERVIEW: http://faculty.wiu.edu/C-Amaravadi/is524/res/dm_c_ov.pdf Brocklebank, M. B. (n.d.). Data Mining . Popovic, Z. (2004). Implementation of data mining techniques in construction estimating , 37-52. Silltow, J. (2006, August). Ia Internal Auditor. Retrieved March 04, 2014, from Data Mining 101 : Tools and Techniques: http://www.theiia.org/intAuditor/itaudit/archives/2006/august/data-mining101-tools-and-techniques/ Smith, D. D.-D. (n.d.). MY COST RUNNETH OVER: . DATA MINING TO REDUCE CONSTRUCTION COST OVERRUNS , 559-568. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved March 04, 2014, from Data Mining: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining#Data_mining