data mining

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The extraction of useful, often previously unknown information from large databases or data sets.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A technique for searching large-scale databases for patterns; used mainly to find previously unknown correlations between variables that may be commercially useful

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun data processing using sophisticated data search capabilities and statistical algorithms to discover patterns and correlations in large preexisting databases; a way to discover new meaning in data