A Basic Primer on Data Mining

Abstract Just as gold mining is a process for sifting through loads of ore to find valuable nuggets, data mining is a process for sifting through massive amounts of data to find information useful for optimizing business decision making and operations. Although interest in data mining is growing, many IT professionals and business managers may not have more than a passing exposure to the term. the purpose of this paper is to provide an introductory tutorial on the topic of data mining. Included are a brief description of data mining methods, a review of data mining software tools, and a survey of examples of data mining applications.