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Chapter 9 Business Intelligence Systems
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Figure 9-22
Credit Score Decision Tree
Source: Used with permission of
TIBCO Software Inc. Copyright ©
1999-2005 TIBCO Software Inc. All
rights reserved.

Of course, the financial institution will need to combine this risk data with an economic analysis
of the value of each loan to determine which loans to take.
Decision trees are easy to understand and, even better, easy to implement using decision
rules. They also can work with many types of variables, and they deal well with partial data.
Organizations can use decision trees by themselves or combine them with other techniques. In
some cases, organizations use decision trees to select variables that are then used by other types of
data mining tools. For example, decision trees can be used to identify good predictor variables for
neural networks.

Q9-6 How Do Organizations Use BigData Applications?

BigData (also spelled Big Data) is a term used to describe data collections that are characterized
by huge volume, rapid velocity, and great variety. In general, the following statements are true of
BigData:
• BigData data sets are at least a petabyte in size, and usually larger.
• BigData is generated rapidly.
• BigData has structured data, free-form text, log files, possibly graphics, audio, and video.

MapReduce

Because BigData is huge, fast, and varied, it cannot be processed using traditional techniques.
MapReduce is a technique for harnessing the power of thousands of computers working in
parallel. The basic idea is that the BigData collection is broken into pieces, and hundreds or thou-
sands of independent processors search these pieces for something of interest. That process is