Data Mining and Textual Analysis in Online Purchases: MSc Project

This assignment is an introduction to a research area, which involves identifying a problem in brief, proposing a solution, and outlining the structure of the thesis. The proposed solution should be described in terms of users, input, output, process, technology, features, and system requirements. The literature review section will provide a critical review of current issues and challenges in data mining and textual analysis for online purchases, highlighting key research from around the world. The technology used to develop solutions will be highlighted, with a special emphasis on the technology selected. This assignment aims to demonstrate an understanding of the research area, problem definition, proposed solution, and structure of the thesis.

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING
School of Computing
MSc. DEGREE
IN
<State your specialization >
Name: <Student Name>
ID Number: <Student ID>
Project Title: <Project Title – e.g. Data Mining and Textual Analysis
in Online Purchases of SL>
Supervisor: <Supervisor Name>
Date: <Date of Submission>

WARRANTY STATEMENT
This is a student project. Therefore, neither the student nor University makes any warranty,
express or implied, as to the accuracy of the data or conclusion of the work performed in the
project and will not be held responsible for any consequences arising out of any inaccuracies or
omissions therein.
i

Declaration
<Attach the provided declaration>
ii

Dedication
<Optional but better if you include one>
iii

Acknowledgement
<Pay gratitude to those who helped (supervisor, friends, parents, etc.) you>
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Abstract
Although it appears first, it is probably the last section to be written. By reading
just the abstract, the reader should get a good sense of what the report says.
This should be one page description that comprises of problem that you address,
your approach (users, input, output, and process), analysis & design,
implementation, evaluation and conclusion. Write more about your work. Do not
use citations, abbreviations and further works in an abstract.
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Contents
1. Introduction..............................................................................................................................1
1.1 Prolegomena...........................................................................................................................1
1.2 Aim and Objectives................................................................................................................1
1.2.1 Aim..................................................................................................................................1
1.2.2 Objectives........................................................................................................................1
1.3 Background and Motivation...................................................................................................2
1.4 Problem in brief.....................................................................................................................2
1.5 Proposed Solution..................................................................................................................2
1.6 Structure of the Thesis...........................................................................................................2
1.7 Summary................................................................................................................................2
2. Literature Review........................................................................................................................3
2.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2.2 Gestation of data mining and textual analysis for online purchases......................................3
2.2 State of the art of data mining and textual analysis for online purchases..............................3
2.3 Future trends..........................................................................................................................3
2.4 Problem definition..................................................................................................................3
2.5 Summary................................................................................................................................3
3. Technology..................................................................................................................................4
4. Design.......................................................................................................................................5
5. Approach..................................................................................................................................6
6. Implementation.........................................................................................................................7
7. Evaluation.................................................................................................................................8
8. Conclusion and Future Work...................................................................................................9
References......................................................................................................................................10
Appendices....................................................................................................................................11
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List of Figures
Here you should list Figures captions followed by names, with page numbers.
vii

List of Tables
Here you should list Tables captions followed by names, with page numbers.
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Abbreviations
Here you should list Abbreviations used in this document.
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1. Introduction
1.1 Prolegomena
E.g. Data mining and textual analysis of online purchases in SL has been a <explain the
importance of selected research area>. According to statistics/ reports, <show the gravity of the
problem/ international>. There are many attempts by various researchers <state the
technologies used by them>. Among those approaches <highlight your findings> have been
reported. This thesis has identified data mining and textual analysis of online purchases in SL as
the research proem and proposed a <proposed solution>
1.2 Aim and Objectives
Write Aim and Objectives of the project under a separate heading as follows.
1.2.1 Aim
Provide your aim, better to use one sentence only.
1.2.2 Objectives
1. Critical review of the challenges
2. In-depth study of technology used for the research area
3. Design and develop the proposed solution
4. Evaluate the solution
1.3 Background and Motivation
In this section you should write brief description including background and
motivation for the project. Give a detail description of achievements, issues in your
research area and their solution. In this you must also show the importance of the
problem with the support from literature. Key research from the world should be
mentioned. This is an introduction to the field. You get many problems, giving
reasons select one problem as the research problem. In addition technology used
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for various solutions should be highlighted, with a special emphasis on the
technology you have selected. This section should have citations to refer to items in
the list of reference.
1.4 Problem in brief
Describe the selected problem here.
1.5 Proposed Solution
In this section, briefly state about your solution in terms of users, input, output,
process, technology, features, and system requirements.
1.6 Structure of the Thesis
You should also add a section about the structure of the dissertation. For example,
Chapter 2 describes the problem domain. Chapter 3 is on …….>
E.g. <This thesis has been structured with 8 chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overall
introduction the project. Chapter 2 provides a critical review of the developments and issues in
the area of data mining and textual analysis of online purchases in SL by defining the research
problem and identification of technologies. Chapter 3 is on technology adapted to building the
proposed solution. Chapter 4 presents the approach to the proposed solution. Chapter 5…….
Finally Chapter 8 concludes the thesis with a note on the possible further work>
1.7 Summary
E.g. <This chapter provided an introduction the entire project. For this purpose, the research
problem, objectives, technology adapted, proposed solution and resource requirements are
presented. Next chapter provides a detailed critical review of the solutions>
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2. Literature Review
Give a suitable name for this heading. For example: Current issues/challenges in
data mining and textual analysis. This section should give a full description about
background information of the project. Based on a literature survey, you should
state about others’ approaches to solve similar problems and highlight your
problem. Try to provide a table for comparison of different approaches. This
section should necessarily have citations to refer to items in the list of reference.
2.1 Introduction
Chapter 1 gave an introduction to overall project. This chapter presents a critical
review of literature on data mining and textual analysis on online purchases. Here
we formulate our research problem and highlight the technology adapted towards
a solution. In doing so, this chapter has been structured with three sections,
namely, gestation, major developments, future trends and problem definition.
Use zotero summaries to build this chapter. This chapter should have lot of
citations/references. Few possible sub sections are given below.
2.2 Gestation of data mining and textual analysis for online
purchases
2.2 State of the art of data mining and textual analysis for
online purchases
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2.3 Future trends
2.4 Problem definition
2.5 Summary
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3. Technology
Sometimes, you may have more than one chapter for this topic. Give a suitable
name for this heading too. Here you should state about the technology that you
adapt to solve the problem. Clearly point out how/why these techniques are
appropriate to solve your problem. This should not be a description of some
technologies, without referring to the problem that you address. This section
should also have citations to refer to items in the list of reference.
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4. Design
This contains details of design (or analysis and design) of your solution. Here you
should necessarily include a diagram to show at least the top level design of the
proposed system. Describe the modules in the diagram stating WHAT each module
does and its interaction with other modules/components. Whenever you introduce a
Figure/Table remember to name Figures/Tables with a caption, and cite Figure
(using the caption) in the body of the text.
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5. Approach
You can change the chapter name to reflect what your project is about. Here you
write on how you adopt the technology to solve the said problem. This description
may be presented with reference to users, inputs, outputs, process, technology that
implements the solution.
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6. Implementation
Here you provide implementation details of each module that is stated in the
design diagram. Remember to maintain the consistency between design and the
implementation sections. In describing the implementation, you should state about,
software, hardware, flowcharts, algorithms, pseudo codes, code segments as per
each module in the design. All these flowcharts, algorithms, etc. may be defined as
figures or listing and cite them inside the text. Extra details of implementations
(e.g. source codes, screenshots) should go to an Appendix.
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7. Evaluation
Report on how you evaluate the solution to see whether objectives have been
achieved. Experimental design, selection of participants, control experiments,
interview techniques, design of questionnaire, etc. must be stated here. Here you
should also present the results from the evaluation in graphs, charts, tables, etc.
Additional details about the evaluation may go as an appendix.
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8. Conclusion Critical Evaluation and
Future Work
Here you conclude the overall achievements quantitatively in the first place. After
that you should state about the achievement of each objective. Also mention about
problem encountered, limitations of your solution, and some further work.
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References
Here you should give details of citations that you have used in the text. An entry in
list of reference generally includes information such as Author, Year, Title of the
Article, Name of Journal/conference, page numbers. There are various reference
and citation styles, but you should use the one shown in the sample.
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Bibliography
Here you should give details list of the books referred to in this work. An entry in
list of reference generally includes information such as Author, Year, Title of the
Article, Name of Journal/conference.
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Appendices
You may have several appendixes (Appendix 1, Appendix 2 or Appendix A,
Appendix B) to refer to further details related to chapters like: Technology
adapted, Analysis and Design, Implementation, evaluation, etc.
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