KEEPING MONEY INTO THE SAVINGS ACCOUNT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not keeping money in a savings account is a common behavior of CD hold­ ers, just as being male is a common feature of beer drinkers. Beer companies seek out males to market their product, so should banks seek out people with no money in savings in order to sell them certificates of deposit? Probably not! Pre­ sumably, the CD holders have no money in their savings accounts because they used that money to buy CDs. A more common reason for not having money in a savings account is not having any money, and people with no money are not likely to purchase certificates of deposit. Similarly, the voice mail users call their own number so much because in this particular system that is one way to check voice mail. The pattern is useless for finding prospective users.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Profiling uses data from the past to describe what happened in the past. Pre diction goes one step further. Prediction uses data from the past to predict what is likely to happen in the future. This is a more powerful use of data. While the correlation between low savings balances and CD ownership may not be use­ ful in a profile of CD holders, it is likely that having a high savings balance is (in combination with other indicators) a predictor of future CD purchases. Building a predictive model requires separation in time between the model inputs or predictors and the model output, the thing to be predicted. If this separation is not maintained, the model will not work. This is one example of why it is important to follow a sound data mining methodology.