# New trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics.

Davide Mottin, Matteo Lissandrini, Yannis Velegrakis, Themis Palpanas

VLDB 2017

## TL;DR

This tutorial explores

• Methods for exploring large datasets using examples
• Algorithmic solutions to search without query languages
• Interactive methods and user-in-the-loop feedback
• Machine learning for adaptive, online methods

## Abstract

Data usually comes in a plethora of formats and dimensions, rendering the exploration and information extraction processes cumbersome. Thus, being able to cast exploratory queries in the data with the intent of having an immediate glimpse on some of the data properties is becoming crucial. An exploratory query should be simple enough to avoid complicate declarative languages (such as SQL) and mechanisms, and at the same time retain the flexibility and expressiveness of such languages. Recently, we have witnessed a rediscovery of the so called example-based methods, in which the user, or the analyst circumvent query languages by using examples as input.

An example is a representative of the intended results, or in other words, an item from the result set. Example-based methods exploit inherent characteristics of the data to infer the results that the user has in mind, but may not able to (easily) express.

They can be useful both in cases where a user is looking for information in an unfamiliar dataset, or simply when she is exploring the data without knowing what to find in there. In this tutorial, we present an excursus over the main methods for exploratory analysis, with a particular focus on example-based methods. We show how different data types require different techniques, and present algorithms that are specifically designed for relational, textual, and graph data.

## Outline

The tutorial covers

1. Example methods in relational databases
2. Example methods in textual data
3. Example methods in graphs
4. Learning methods based on examples

## Cite us

@article{Mottin:2017:NTE:3137765.3137824,
author = {Mottin, Davide and Lissandrini, Matteo and Velegrakis, Yannis and Palpanas, Themis},
title = {New Trends on Exploratory Methods for Data Analytics},
journal = {Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment},
issue_date = {August 2017},
volume = {10},
number = {12},
month = aug,
year = {2017},
issn = {2150-8097},
pages = {1977--1980},
numpages = {4},
doi = {10.14778/3137765.3137824},
acmid = {3137824},
publisher = {VLDB Endowment},
}