A conversation with Professor Bole Shi

Looking back in the past, we note that in the past 20 years, data mining has been a popular topic in academic research, but in industrial applications, we have heard few exciting examples after the "beer and diapers" one. This is in part due to the general pattern of technological advances, in which the advance of academic research is ahead of industrial applications. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the fact that in this past 20 years, in the world, especially in China, data processing and analytics have focused more on data accumulation and integration phase, but the need for wide-spread data mining has yet to come. Currently, after so many years of accumulation and preparation, whether in China or in the world, the scale and complexity of available data has far exceeded our expectations, and further development of data mining will finally take the central stage of research and development. In this view, we expect to see more advance in data mining in terms of its ability to handle greater data types, larger scales, diverse business needs, application varieties and crossdisciplinary integration.