Three attitudes towards data mining

Kevin Hoover () and Stephen Perez

Journal of Economic Methodology, 2001, vol. 7, issue 2, 195-210

Abstract: 'Data mining' refers to a broad class of activities that have in common, a search over different ways to process or package data statistically or econometrically with the purpose of making the final presentation meet certain design criteria. We characterize three attitudes toward data mining: first, that it is to be avoided and, if it is engaged in, that statistical inferences must be adjusted to account for it; second, that it is inevitable and that the only results of any interest are those that transcend the variety of alternative data mined specifications (a view associated with Leamer's extreme-bounds analysis); and third, that it is essential and that the only hope we have of using econometrics to uncover true economic relationships is to be found in the intelligent mining of data. The first approach confuses considerations of sampling distribution and considerations of epistemic warrant and, reaches an unnecessarily hostile attitude toward data mining. The second approach relies on a notion of robustness that has little relationship to truth: there is no good reason to expect a true specification to be robust alternative specifications. Robustness is not, in general, a carrier of epistemic warrant. The third approach is operationalized in the general-to-specific search methodology of the LSE school of econometrics. Its success demonstrates that intelligent data mining is an important element in empirical investigation in economics.

Keywords: Data Mining; Extreme-BOUNDS Analysis; Specification Search; General-TO-SPECIFIC; Lse Econometrics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501780050045083 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jecmet:v:7:y:2001:i:2:p:195-210

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13501780050045083

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Methodology is currently edited by John Davis and D Wade Hands

More articles in Journal of Economic Methodology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().