Data mining is the discovery of previously unknown and potentially useful predictive relationships in large volumes of data. Data mining is widely used in marketing, finance, and commerce (1). Each time you use your Safeway Club CardŽ or your Visa card, information about your purchase is placed into large databases which are periodically "mined" to discover relationships in purchasing habits, to allow the vendors to suggest companion purchases, adjust inventory, and tailor advertising to your particular shopping habits. The analysis methods used in data mining derive from statistics and machine learning, and they are equally applicable to data from say, the Human Genome Initiative or a drug discovery project, as to shopping or credit card transactions. However, almost all existing data mining books and courses are aimed at commercial applications and users (2). 1. Michael J. A. Berry and David Linoff, Data Mining Techniques: For Marketing, Sales, and Customer Relationship Management, Wiley, New York, 2004. 2. For example, the Central Connecticut State University Program in Data Mining, http://www.ccsu.edu/datamining/. Online Introduction to Scientific Data Mining This course is designed to bridge the gap between the commercial world and the scientific world in the application of data mining techniques to large data sets. The goal of the course is to equip scientists and graduate students in the chemical and biological sciences, who may have a minimal background in statistics, with basic data mining tools and strategies that they can apply in their own research and knowledge discovery. It does this in an online learning environment that is more accessible, collaborative, and individualized than classroom learning. Some Data Mining Links Weka software This is a popular Java-based open source program for common data mining applications. Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Web Page This site features links to other data mining sites, and a weekly newsletter for data miners. Data Mining White Paper A highly readable introduction to data mining techniques.

Data Mining