Challenges in Scalable Data Solutions for Text Mining

Data scientists and the companies that rely on them are facing new and difficult difficulties as a result of the proliferation of unstructured data. This problem often arises when dealing with textual data, for instance.

Big data typically does not involve textual material. However, it’s growing in significance as more businesses rely on text-based, unstructured data.

Covering the applications of textual data mining is necessary before delving into the difficulties of the field. Reasons text mining and analysis are gaining prominence are discussed below.

Many organizations rely on feedback from unstructured surveys

Numerous market research companies, like Gallup, Pew, and others, heavily rely on closed-ended questions with numerical imports correlating to each provided response. Although the survey results can be eye-opening, participants are not given a chance to provide any context for the problems.

A rising number of businesses are beginning to understand the significance of open-ended questions. Participants must be given the chance to elaborate so they can offer information that the survey’s designers may not have even thought to include.

Future surveys and follow-up studies can benefit greatly by mining the textual data from these questionnaires.

Social media trends forecasting

Social media developments affect practically every firm significantly. Additionally, it is notoriously difficult to foresee them. It is simple to ignore them even as they acquire momentum.

It is simpler to monitor and predict trends on social media thanks to textual data mining. Many of the more traditional social networking platforms only track defined types of data, including recognized hashtags. Newer social media predictive analytics solutions also monitor unstructured data from significant social media sites because the scope of their research is considerably more constrained. Word maps and other big data visualization techniques are frequently employed with these tools to indicate the volume of usage of a certain social media phrase.

Competitive research

For competitive analysis, there are many textual data mining methods available. They have the ability to scrape information from rival websites, Yelp profiles, and other online properties. Organizations can use these tools to ascertain the following:

• The main selling point of their rivals’ marketing plans.
• The price range of their rivals’ goods.
• The number of competitors in a certain market.
• The general opinion of rivals is based on client feedback.

These analyses can be performed using a variety of technologies. Previously, Compete.com offered competitive analyses and search engine rankings of numerous businesses. With the help of the tool Local Business Extractor, businesses can find competitors in particular areas by mining all known Google Places listings and websites. This program may analyze the text on these profiles to look for words associated with a certain sector. Brands don’t need to utilize specific tags in order to appear in the results because it makes educated guesses easier.

What are textual data mining’s restrictions?

The development of big data has been significantly aided by the use of textual data mining. Unfortunately, there are some significant limits, and the technology is currently a work in progress.

Determining the length of strings to process in the textual analysis is one of the toughest issues. Fewer data will be found that fit the criteria when textual data mining algorithms attempt to extract and analyze lengthier sequences of characters. By concentrating on shorter strings, they will be able to process a larger number of textual requests. For many applications, though, the accuracy of those assessments will be poorer because it will be more difficult for them to comprehend the context of short strings.

Additionally, they must make an effort to account for typos and other discrepancies. While most modern data mining algorithms can account for these variations, they are not entirely accurate.

Frequently asked questions:

What difficulties does text mining face?

Major concerns and challenges that develop throughout the text mining process include the integration of domain knowledge, different ideas’ granularities, multilingual text refining, and ambiguity in natural language processing. 

What are the two biggest problems with text analysis?

The main problem for text analytics is unstructured and unsuitable data, according to this study. The information found in online databases and archives could be riddled with grammatical mistakes, employ misspelt terms, and use abbreviated variants of phrases.

What does scalability mean in data mining?

Scalability is a term used to describe a system’s capacity to adjust its performance and cost in response to shifts in application and system processing demands.