Data Preparation for Data Mining

Rating:
Summary: Must read book for data mining
Review: An excellent book. This book helped me to understand what data preparation is really about. Read this before start any data mining project.

Rating:
Summary: Must read book for data mining
Review: An excellent book. This book helped me to understand what data preparation is really about. Read this before start any data mining project.

Rating:
Summary: A must have book
Review: Anyone who practices data mining lives the issues discussed in this book. The book dissects and explains important data challenges.

Dorian communicates far more than knowledge about the nomenclature of the problems. His focus is instead on the trade-offs one makes while wrestling with data issues. He provides sage counsel on how the practioner can address data for the specific types of analytical problems one faces.

I own about 15 data mining books, this is the one that I use the most.

Rating:
Summary: A must have book
Review: Anyone who practices data mining lives the issues discussed in this book. The book dissects and explains important data challenges.

Dorian communicates far more than knowledge about the nomenclature of the problems. His focus is instead on the trade-offs one makes while wrestling with data issues. He provides sage counsel on how the practioner can address data for the specific types of analytical problems one faces.

I own about 15 data mining books, this is the one that I use the most.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I started to work in Data Mining about 7 years ago. I have read many books about this subject and nearly all of them have similar approaches and stress the importance of the data preparation but they all, except one, just discuss lightly this subject. I don't know any book that deal with data preparation as Pyle's book does. Each topic is discussed in-depth. This is a very clear and enjoyable book. I have tested all concepts and the results are amazing.

Chapter 11 introduces the Data Survey topic in which techniques based in Shannon's Information Theory are showed. These information theory approaches are simply wonderful and gives to the Data Mining subject the bases to get models that extract complete relevant information from the data.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to work seriously with Data Mining.

Rating:
Summary: This book saved me when all else had failed.
Review: I was in the market for some information on how to scale data before using it with a neural network. After trying to wade through material that was somewhat inaccessible to my feeble brain, this book saved me. I was able to implement a simple scaling system in less than 2 hours. I later asked one of the econometricians at my company if I had done the scaling properly, and he said I did! This book is simple to understand, and best of all, it was correct!!

Rating:
Summary: A must have...
Review: I've had the pleasure of listening to Dorian speak at seminars and even sharing a few brief words with him in person. When he mentioned to me last year that he was working on this book I had no idea how thorough and complete it would be. In fact, I remember wondering to myself how anyone could get their hands around this difficult, yet important aspect of data mining. I'm in awe! Anyone in the trenches will immediately understand the value of this book. Those just getting started in data mining will probably have no idea how much simpler their job just became. My only criticism of this book is that its title obscures that fact that there is a wealth of general data mining information contained within it - practical well beyond the data preparation phase. To understand why and how certain data preparation techniques work is to go a long way towards appreciating subtleties throughout the rest of the data mining process. Thanks Dorian!

Rating:
Summary: Is this book for you?
Review: Thank you for your interest in my book!

The book is about exactly what the title suggests, how to prepare data for mining. I wrote it because in data mining, one of the most important parts of the whole process is to properly prepare the data. The importance of preparation is acknowledged at conferences, seminars, presentations and in books about data mining. Yet despite its importance, it is not really addressed in detail anywhere else.

Data mining is becoming very popular today, and many people are interested in using these new and powerful tools. Perhaps you are one of them. You may not have a background in statistics or data analysis, but you still want to get the most out of what data mining offers. But how do you begin? Most data mining books talk at length about what various algorithms do, and how to apply them to prepared data. But how do you get started? This book will help you to see the process, understand what is needed, and get the most out of your data in solving real world business problems.

Of course, data preparation is a technical subject. I do assume that you know the basics of computing, and that at some point you took high school math (although you may well have forgotten most of what you learned about it!) That's ok. Basic knowledge of computing and forgotten high school math, plus an interest in understanding how to get the most out of your data, is all you will need to understand what is in this book. There is very little math here, and even what there is can be ignored if you only want an overview.

If you are a programmer, or understand how to read computer programs, all of the tools that are described in the text are illustrated with code. Once again, you don't need to understand the code to use the tools and techniques. It's there if you want it, but this is not a book about programming. My focus throughout is on helping you to understand what to do with and to data to get the most out of it. And so that you can experiment for yourself, there are some sample data sets provided for you to explore. The code is ready compiled for you to use on the data, as well as in source form.

My book is mainly intended for people who need to work with data and to mine it. However, if you only need to understand what is involved in the preparation and mining process, and what can realistically be expected from it, this book will help you to. You will certainly want to skip the more technical parts, but there is plenty of non-technical material that will give you a good idea of the process.

I really enjoyed writing the book. I have spent a lot of my professional life working with data sets to find out what is in them and to get value out of them. I hope that you enjoy reading it, and that by doing so, you can avoid making some of the mistakes that I made along the way! Most of what I learned was as a result of discovering what didn't work, and then discovering what did on many, many projects.

I wish you much luck and success in your mining efforts.

Rating:
Summary: Great book about data and Data Mining
Review: The book "Data Preparation for Data Mining" is not a common Data Mining book. Nowdays a classical Data Mining book contains a metodology how to solve class of standard problems. This means more a set of prescriptions and receipts for elaborating various solutions to customer loyality, retention etc.
The book by Dorian Pyle is different.It is not a Data Mining book, because as the authors claims, Data Mining is only a part of wider subject, which he calls Data Exploration. He shows us wider spectrum of various subjects considering data than you can find in other books. He gives us a good background that helps to recognize the source of problems with data. Some subjects are not to find in other sources. They come directly from author's reach experience. To summarise - the autor of the book managed to describe the whole subject area considering data, that is not to find in other books on this topics. To achive that knowledge we should read many other publications from different areas.

Rating:
Summary: Great book about data and Data Mining
Review: The book "Data Preparation for Data Mining" is not a common Data Mining book. Nowdays a classical Data Mining book contains a metodology how to solve class of standard problems. This means more a set of prescriptions and receipts for elaborating various solutions to customer loyality, retention etc.
The book by Dorian Pyle is different.It is not a Data Mining book, because as the authors claims, Data Mining is only a part of wider subject, which he calls Data Exploration. He shows us wider spectrum of various subjects considering data than you can find in other books. He gives us a good background that helps to recognize the source of problems with data. Some subjects are not to find in other sources. They come directly from author's reach experience. To summarise - the autor of the book managed to describe the whole subject area considering data, that is not to find in other books on this topics. To achive that knowledge we should read many other publications from different areas.