Data Mining: Don’t throw out the trash…recycle it.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the acronym GIGO (garbage in garbage out). You’ve also heard the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” These adages are especially true when mining and analyzing data. Data that is exported for analysis is often incomplete due to errors or omissions in data entry or exporting procedures. Unfortunately, many recovery audit analysts will throw out the trash by either disregarding or not recognizing unmatched or incomplete records.
If a database contains 100 million records and 2% of the line items are trash, the ability to analyze two million records may be lost. Those two million records may be the exceptions we are looking for. Our ability to turn trash into treasure depends on our resourcefulness in completing or correcting (recycling) the data.
In depth data analysis, cleansing, and normalization procedures are key to providing a thorough, accurate, and complete recovery audit.
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