In nearly every area of business and science — even in our private life — we are confronted with an increase in data flows. Data that is collected and processed. Data that holds valuable information, and may provide us knowledge, but often is inaccessible because of its form and volume.
Fortunately, new methods are emerging and evolving that enable us to create knowledge from data. Specifically, methods and tools that extract previously unknown information from aggregations of data. To name a few examples, patterns and relations can be revealed, clusters identified and predictions made. The application extends to many types of data: concepts and relations can be derived from large text collections, image and video collections can be analyzed for better access.
This book gives an idea of the possibilities and expectations of data mining from five perspectives:
Science - The role of data mining for science in general is discussed and many examples are given.
Business and government - Starting from several common needs in these environments, over ten cases are presented illustrating present and future possibilities for data mining.
Ethics, privacy and legislation - Ethical aspects of web mining, fair information practices and some general legal aspects are examined.
The individual - From the perspective of the individual (one moment a knowledge worker, the next a private person) looking for an exciting scene in a sports match video a different view arises: text mining, web mining, image, video and music mining are the topics here. We also discuss the role of data mining in personal knowledge management.
Technology and techniques - After a discussion on methodology and process embedding, we will zoom in on twenty knowledge discovery, data mining and analysis techniques, the basic building blocks enabling us to convert data into knowledge.
The book is enhanced by a CD-rom, containing the full book text and many tutorials, reports, and papers both deepening and widening the view. All textual data is accessible through an integrated text mining tool. Many of the techniques from the technical part of this book can be explored through freeware and demo software included on the CD-rom.
Jeroen Meij was projectleader of this STT foresight study and editor of the book. The various chapters and numerous paragraphs were written by renowned European, American and Japanese scientists.
