As established, both data mining and machine learning focus on forming future predictions based on historical data, and very often use the same self-learning algorithms to form these predictions. However, whereas machine learning uses self-learning algorithms to improve with experience at a given task, data mining focuses on analyzing data to discover previously unseen patterns or properties. Data mining is thus exploratory in nature as it searches for unknown knowledge, whereas machine learning concentrates on studying and reproducing specifically known knowledge to form predictions.
