Data Mining with Rattle and R

Book excerpt: Data mining is the art and science of intelligent data analysis. By building knowledge from information, data mining adds considerable value to the ever increasing stores of electronic data that abound today. In performing data mining many decisions need to be made regarding the choice of methodology, the choice of data, the choice of tools, and the choice of algorithms. Throughout this book the reader is introduced to the basic concepts and some of the more popular algorithms of data mining. With a focus on the hands-on end-to-end process for data mining, Williams guides the reader through various capabilities of the easy to use, free, and open source Rattle Data Mining Software built on the sophisticated R Statistical Software. The focus on doing data mining rather than just reading about data mining is refreshing. The book covers data understanding, data preparation, data refinement, model building, model evaluation, and practical deployment. The reader will learn to rapidly deliver a data mining project using software easily installed for free from the Internet. Coupling Rattle with R delivers a very sophisticated data mining environment with all the power, and more, of the many commercial offerings.