“If you torture the data long enough, Nature will confess,” said 1991 Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase. Fortunately, while being aware of the above facts, the reader (a data miner) will find several efficient data mining tools described in this excellent book.

Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Process.- The Knowledge Discovery Process.- Data Understanding.- Data.- Concepts of Learning, Classification, and Regression.- Knowledge Representation.- Data Preprocessing.- Databases, Data Warehouses, and OLAP.- Feature Extraction and Selection Methods.- Discretization Methods.- Data Mining: Methods for Constructing Data Models.- Unsupervised Learning: Clustering.- Unsupervised Learning: Association Rules.- Supervised Learning: Statistical Methods.- Supervised Learning: Decision Trees, Rule Algorithms, and Their Hybrids.- Supervised Learning: Neural Networks.- Text Mining.- Data Models Assessment.- Assessment of Data Models.- Data Security and Privacy Issues.- Data Security, Privacy and Data Mining.

This comprehensive textbook on data mining details the unique steps of the knowledge discovery process that prescribe the sequence in which data mining projects should be performed. Data Mining offers an authoritative treatment of all development phases from problem and data understanding through data preprocessing to deployment of the results. This knowledge discovery approach is what distinguishes this book from other texts in the area. It concentrates on data preparation, clustering and association rule learning (required for processing unsupervised data), decision trees, rule induction algorithms, neural networks, and many other data mining methods, focusing predominantly on those which have proven successful in data mining projects. Based upon the authors’ previous successful book on data mining and knowledge discovery, this new volume has been extensively expanded, making it an effective instructional tool for advanced-level undergraduate and graduate courses. This book offers: A suite of exercises at the end of every chapter, designed to enhance the reader’s understanding of the theory and proficiency with the tools presented Links to all-inclusive instructional presentations for each chapter to ensure easy use in classroom teaching Extensive appendices covering relevant mathematical material for convenient look-up Methods for addressing issues related to data privacy and security within the context of data mining, enabling the reader to balance potentially conflicting aims Summaries and bibliographical notes for each chapter, providing a broader perspective of the concepts and methods described Researchers, practitioners and students are certain to consider this volume an indispensable resource in successfullyaccomplishing the goals of their data mining projects.    

From the reviews: “This is a comprehensive book about knowledge discovery methods. … the book is highly recommended to final year undergraduate students, postgraduate students and lecturers. … it has a good balance of various topics making it a good reference book for practitioners, such as data modellers, insight analysts, fraud analysts, etc., as well as researchers. … this book is very well organized and presented. … I would certainly recommend it to those with intermediate or advanced understanding of data-mining topics.” (Boran Gazi, The Computer Journal, Vol. 53 (4), 2010)