Prior to beginning work on this assignment, review Chapter 21 of your textbook.

In this assignment, you will analyze current data mining practices and evaluate the pros and cons of data mining. Provide one example of a company that has successfully practiced data mining and discuss why they were successful. Then, research a company that experienced a failed data mining practice. What data mining best practices could they have implemented to avoid this failure?

In your paper,

• Discuss the industry standards for data mining best practices.
• Identify pitfalls in data mining, including practices that should be avoided.
• Provide an example of company that has successfully practiced data mining. What steps and precautions did they take to ensure the success of their data mining endeavor? How did they keep customer data safe?
• In a second example, research a company that experienced a failed data mining experience. What pitfalls did the organization fall into? What would you have done differently?

The Data Mining Best Practices paper

• Must be four to five double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least two credible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.