Actionable Mining of Large, Multi-relational Data Using Localized Predictive Models

Many large datasets associated with modern predictive data mining applications are quite complex and heterogeneous, possibly involving multiple relations, or exhibiting a dyadic nature with associated side-information. For example, one may be interested in predicting the preferences of a large set of customers for a variety of products, given various properties of both customers and products, as well as past purchase history, a social network on the customers, and a conceptual hierarchy on the products. This article provides an overview of recent innovative approaches to predictive modeling for such types of data, and also provides some concrete application scenarios to highlight the issues involved. The common philosophy in all the approaches described is to pursue a simultaneous problem decomposition and modeling strategy that can exploit heterogeneity in behavior, use the wide variety of information available and also yield relatively more interpretable solutions as compared to global ”one-shot” approaches. Since both the problem domains and approaches considered are quite new, we also highlight the potential for further investigations on several occasions throughout this article.