Data Mining deals with discovering hidden data and unexpected patterns and rules in large databases. It can bring significant gains to organizations, for example, through better-targeted marketing and enhanced internal performance. 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 clear 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 examples.