Information retrieval (IR) vs data mining vs Machine Learning (ML)

Question

People often throw around the terms IR, ML, and data mining, but I have noticed a lot of overlap between them.

From people with experience in these fields, what exac

Answer 1

I'd try to draw the line as follows:

Information retrieval is about finding something that already is part of your data, as fast as possible.

Machine learning are techniques to generalize existing knowledge to new data, as accurate as possible.

Data mining is primarly about discovering something hidden in your data, that you did not know before, as "new" as possible.

They intersect and often use techniques of one another. DM and IR both use index structures to accelerate processes. DM uses a lot of ML techniques, for example a pattern in the data set that is useful for generalization might be a new knowledge.

They are often hard to separate. Do yourself a favor and don't just go for the buzzwords. In my opinion the best way of distinguishing them is by their intention, as given above: find data, generalize to new data, find new properties of existing data.