Data Mining

This chapter gives an informal introduction to data mining, an area that grew into a recognizable scientific and engineering discipline through the nineties. This development is due to the advances in data analysis research, growth in the database industry and the resulting needs in the market for methods that are capable of extracting value from the large data stores. In this chapter, data mining is presented from historical, application and scientific perspective. The chapter describes selected data mining methods that proved useful in the applications described in this book.