Data dredging

基本概念

Data dredging, sometimes referred to as “data fishing” is a data mining practice in which large volumes of data are analyzed seeking any possible relationships between data. The traditional scientific method, in contrast, begins with a hypothesis and follows with an examination of the data. Sometimes conducted for unethical purposes, data dredging often circumvents traditional data mining techniques and may lead to premature conclusions. Data dredging is sometimes described as “seeking more information from a data set than it actually contains.”

from http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/data-dredging

更详细见维基百科
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging