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Mastering Data Mining
by Michael J. A. Berry, Gordon S. Linoff


Wiley
1 edition
December 1999
512 pages

Reviewed by Margarita Isayeva, May 2003
  (9 of 10)


I was looking for an introductive overview on "what is data mining", and I am more than satisfied.

This book is about data mining in practice rather than in theory. It describes the whole process, from deciding which data columns aren't very useful, to testing and tuning the model -- the very details they forgot to tell us in my statistics class. There are rules of thumb ("set a minimum node size for a decision tree around 50 or 100"), and estimations ("in general, you need at least several thousand records in the model set", "the ratio of the rarer outcome should comprise 15-30%"). Three main techniques: cluster-detection, decision trees, and neural networks are described, and the principles of their working explained in plain language. Details are provided concerning when to use each technique (neural networks cannot explain result while decision trees can), and what types of data each technique works best with (decision trees works with categorical variables (e.g. list of states), neural networks require numerical input and cannot deal with missing values).

Almost half of the book is devoted to case studies. It can be boring reading, unless you are a data obsessed person, and if you are not, you probably shouldn't go into data mining. I was surprised myself that I did not skip this part, instead reading it with increasing interest.

My only complaint about the content: there is no chapter about what software is available to perform data mining.

Almost no formulas are presented, except for a few simple diversity metrics given in a couple of sidebars. There are however plenty of graphics, diagrams, and screen-shots. The text is very dense, so I was a little overwhelmed after my first reading. A second pass was needed to improve my understanding.

The book is so practically oriented, that it's almost "learning by example". To get the most of it, read it after you read a more traditional, systematic tutorial -- it will be an indispensable supplement.

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