There are mashups that let you see which products are selling best on eBay , that help manage the sale of foreclosed property through a network of real estate agents, or merge sales information with data mining from analysis firm Business Objects .

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Without question, TIA represented a radical leap ahead in both data-mining technology and intelligence analysis.

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Pattern analysis -- the heart of data mining -- is conventional crime-solving, whether the suspicious patterns are spotted on a crime pin map, on a city street, or in an electronic database.

CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Balancing security and privacy during wartime

As a result, they can do what-if analysis, model data, and run sophisticated data mining and forecasting algorithms that return answers within minutes, enabling them to fine-tune and refine their offers and service bundles to accurately reflect the needs of their subscribers.

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Glen Jones of Intierra RMG, a company that provides sources of data, analysis, consulting, reports and mineral information maps to the mining industry, believes there is a significant amount of risk in the sector today.

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Dr Hand admires the meticulous work of Steve McIntyre, a mining consultant and blogger, who unearthed statistical problems in another climate analysis.

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Instead of checking in to some wildly expensive spa for a few days of wired-up analysis by teams of kinesiology eggheads with space-age machines, how about doing a some deep data-mining using the soggy, smelly, salt-stained socks and shirt and shorts in your workout bag?

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