ICTs to empower rural communities, improve rural livelihoods

One of the critical prerequisites for data mining is something called “domain expertise.” Generally defined, domain expertise implies knowledge and understanding of the essential aspects of a specific field of inquiry. In other words, you need to know your stuff. This is absolutely essential in data mining because so much of the discovery and evaluation process is guided by an intuitive knowledge of what has value, both in terms of input and output, as well as of what makes sense. With a poor understanding of where the information came from and what the results will be used for, the analytical products are unlikely to have much, if any, value. Briefly stated, domain expertise is used to evaluate the inputs, guide the process, and evaluate the end products within the context of value and validity.