Data Mining: A Tutorial Based Primer

Rating:
Summary: Overall, a very good hands-on book for learning data mining
Review: The book does a good job covering basic data mining terminology and concepts, and provides introductory, but still subtantial coverage of the most common data mining methods.

Positives: a trial version of the easy-to-use Excel-based iDA tool is included with the book, which allows the reader to reproduce the examples (very helpful for understanding the text). iDA may also be used to complete many of the well thought out exercises provided at the end of each chapter. Working with the hands-on examples and exercises is an excellent way to learn data mining, and due to this, the book provides unique and excellent value.

Negatives: the order of topics and chapters seems rather disorganized; topics are often (surprisingly) repeated and the overall structure of the book doesn't seem to make sense at times. But if you read each chapter more or less independently, this isn't a serious problem. The iDA tool that comes with the text is a trial, 180-day version, and it is unlikely that the average reader will want to spend $5,000 to purchase a license for the commercial product after the six month trial is up. So you should buy the book knowing ahead of time that after a while, the iDA tool will no longer be available to go back over the examples or exercises.

Rating:
Summary: Unique approach and many insights
Review: Using an Excel-based tool to provide a hands-on approach, this book covers diverse areas in data mining from statistical patterns to data warehousing to the semantic web. Easy to read and with many insights.