How do you select the right data mining tool? What criteria are important when evaluating alternatives?
In the beginning, select an analytical tool whose breadth and depth matches the business need for data mining. If there s a choice, choose the tool that your data miners already know. This may sound a bit surprising, but most folks who have done post-graduate work have had to use analytical tools such as those from SAS Institute and SPSS Inc. So it s very likely that the people qualified to do data mining are familiar with at least one of the more sophisticated and proven tools on the market. Every organization will and should have different selection criteria, but the following four criteria should be part of every tool evaluation: depth of analytical technique, breadth of analytical technique, data handling features, and ease of use. (Depth refers to the quality and reliability of each analytical technique; breadth refers to the number of analytical techniques supported by the tool.) There are many pretenders in the market, but only a dozen or so tools actually do well what they clai
