Data Mining

Data Mining deals with discovering hidden knowlege, unexpected patterns and rules in large databases. It can bring significant gains to organizations, for example, through better targeted marketing and enhanced internal performance. If you have large data sets (for example, large quantities of financial data, extensive customer databases or sales records) you can benefit from this newly emerging field. But setting up a data mining environment is not a trivial task. The long-term goal must be to create a self-learning organization that makes optimal use of the information it generates.

This is the first book to offer a comprehensive introduction to data mining. Its aim is to provide essential insights and guidelines to help you make the right decisions when setting up a data mining environment.

It offers answers to questions such as:

• What is Data Mining?
• Which techniques are suitable for my data?
• How do I set up a data mining environment?
• How do I justify the costs?

The whole data mining process, including data selection, cleaning, coding, different pattern recognition techniques and reporting, is illustrated by means of an extensive case study and numerous answers.

Audience

• General management and IT managers