The Role of Domain Knowledge in a Large Scale Data Mining Project

Data Mining techniques have been applied in many application areas. A Data Mining project has been often described as a process of automatic discovery of new knowledge from large amounts of data. However the role of the domain knowledge in this process and the forms that this can take, is an issue that has been given little attention so far. Based on our experience with a large scale Data Mining industrial project we present in this paper an outline of the role of domain knowledge in the various phases of the process. This project has led to the development of a decision support expert system for a major Telecommunications Operator. The data mining process is described in the paper as a continuous interaction between explicit domain knowledge, and knowledge that is discovered through the use of data mining algorithms. The role of the domain experts and data mining experts in this process is discussed. Examples from our case study are also provided.