Data mining isn’t a new invention that came with the digital age. The concept has been around for over a century but came into greater public focus in the 1930s.

According to Hacker Bits, one of the first modern moments of data mining occurred in 1936, when Alan Turing introduced the idea of a universal machine that could perform computations similar to those of modern-day computers.

Forbes also reported on Turing’s development of the “Turing Test” in 1950 to determine if a computer has real intelligence or not. To pass his test, a computer needed to fool a human into believing it was also human. Just two years later, Arthur Samuel created The Samuel Checkers-playing Program that appears to be the world’s first self-learning program. It miraculously learned as it played and got better at winning by studying the best moves.

We’ve come a long way since then. Businesses are now harnessing data mining and machine learning to improve everything from their sales processes to interpreting financials for investment purposes. As a result, data scientists have become vital employees at organizations all over the world as companies seek to achieve bigger goals with data science than ever before.

Data Mining vs. Machine Learning vs. Data Science

With big data becoming so prevalent in the business world, a lot of data terms tend to be thrown around, with many not quite understanding what they mean. What is data mining? Is there a difference between machine learning vs. data science? How do they connect to each other? Isn’t machine learning just artificial intelligence? All of these are good questions, and discovering their answers can provide a deeper, more rewarding understanding of data science and analytics and how they can benefit a company.

Both data mining and machine learning are rooted in data science and generally fall under that umbrella. They often intersect or are confused with each other, but there are a few key distinctions between the two. Here’s a look at some data mining and machine learning differences between data mining and machine learning and how they can be used.

Data Use

One key difference between machine learning and data mining is how they are used and applied in our everyday lives. For example, data mining is often used by machine learning to see the connections between relationships. Uber uses machine learning to calculate ETAs for rides or meal delivery times for UberEATS.

Data mining can be used for a variety of purposes, including financial research. Investors might use data mining and web scraping to look at a start-up’s financials and help determine if they want to offer to fund. A company may also use data mining to help collect data on sales trends to better inform everything from marketing to inventory needs, as well as to secure new leads. Data mining can be used to comb through social media profiles, websites, and digital assets to compile information on a company’s ideal leads to start an outreach campaign. Using data mining can lead to 10,000 leads in 10 minutes. With this much information, a data scientist can even predict future trends that will help a company prepare well for what customers may want in the months and years to come.

Machine learning embodies the principles of data mining, but can also make automatic correlations and learn from them to apply to new algorithms. It’s the technology behind self-driving cars that can quickly adjust to new conditions while driving. Machine learning also provides instant recommendations when a buyer purchases a product from Amazon. These algorithms and analytics are constantly meant to be improving, so the result will only get more accurate over time. Machine learning isn’t artificial intelligence, but the ability to learn and improve is still an impressive feat. Riveting machine