Contains extended versions of a selection of papers presented at the workshop Data mining for business, held in 2007 together with the 11th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Nanjing China--Preface.

In spite of the close relationship between research and practice in Data Mining, it is not easy to find information on some of the important issues involved in real world application of DM technology. This book address some of these issues. It is suitable for Data Mining researchers and practitioners.

The application of Data Mining (DM) technologies has shown an explosive growth in an increasing number of different areas of business, government and science. Two of the most important business areas are finance, in particular in banks and insurance companies, and e-business, such as web portals, e-commerce and ad management services. In spite of the close relationship between research and practice in Data Mining, it is not easy to find information on some of the most important issues involved in real world application of DM technology, from business and data understanding to evaluation and deployment. Papers often describe research that was developed without taking into account constraints imposed by the motivating application. When these issues are taken into account, they are frequently not discussed in detail because the paper must focus on the method. Therefore knowledge that could be useful for those who would like to apply the same approach on a related problem is not shared. The papers in this book address some of these issues. This book is of interest not only to Data Mining researchers and practitioners, but also to students who wish to have an idea of the practical issues involved in Data Mining.

Contains extended versions of a selection of papers presented at the workshop Data mining for business, held in 2007 together with the 11th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Nanjing China--Preface.

Data Mining in Finance presents a comprehensive overview of major algorithmic approaches to predictive data mining, including statistical, neural networks, ruled-based, decision-tree, and fuzzy-logic methods, and then examines the suitability of these approaches to financial data mining. The book focuses specifically on relational data mining (RDM), which is a learning method able to learn more expressive rules than other symbolic approaches. RDM is thus better suited for financial mining, because it is able to make greater use of underlying domain knowledge. Relational data mining also has a better ability to explain the discovered rules - an ability critical for avoiding spurious patterns which inevitably arise when the number of variables examined is very large. The earlier algorithms for relational data mining, also known as inductive logic programming (ILP), suffer from a relative computational inefficiency and have rather limited tools for processing numerical data. Data Mining in Finance introduces a new approach, combining relational data mining with the analysis of statistical significance of discovered rules. This reduces the search space and speeds up the algorithms. The book also presents interactive and fuzzy-logic tools for `mining' the knowledge from the experts, further reducing the search space. Data Mining in Finance contains a number of practical examples of forecasting S&P 500, exchange rates, stock directions, and rating stocks for portfolio, allowing interested readers to start building their own models. This book is an excellent reference for researchers and professionals in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data mining, knowledge discovery, and applied mathematics.

Data mining is already incorporated into the business processes in sectors such as health, retail, automotive, finance, telecom and insurance as well as in government. This book contains extended versions of a selection of papers presented at a series of workshops held between 2005 and 2008 on the subject of data mining for business applications.

Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts, Techniques, and Applications in Python presents an applied approach to data mining concepts and methods, using Python software for illustration Readers will learn how to implement a variety of popular data mining algorithms in Python (a free and open-source software) to tackle business problems and opportunities. This is the sixth version of this successful text, and the first using Python. It covers both statistical and machine learning algorithms for prediction, classification, visualization, dimension reduction, recommender systems, clustering, text mining and network analysis. It also includes: A new co-author, Peter Gedeck, who brings both experience teaching business analytics courses using Python, and expertise in the application of machine learning methods to the drug-discovery process A new section on ethical issues in data mining Updates and new material based on feedback from instructors teaching MBA, undergraduate, diploma and executive courses, and from their students More than a dozen case studies demonstrating applications for the data mining techniques described End-of-chapter exercises that help readers gauge and expand their comprehension and competency of the material presented A companion website with more than two dozen data sets, and instructor materials including exercise solutions, PowerPoint slides, and case solutions Data Mining for Business Analytics: Concepts, Techniques, and Applications in Python is an ideal textbook for graduate and upper-undergraduate level courses in data mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. This new edition is also an excellent reference for analysts, researchers, and practitioners working with quantitative methods in the fields of business, finance, marketing, computer science, and information technology. “This book has by far the most comprehensive review of business analytics methods that I have ever seen, covering everything from classical approaches such as linear and logistic regression, through to modern methods like neural networks, bagging and boosting, and even much more business specific procedures such as social network analysis and text mining. If not the bible, it is at the least a definitive manual on the subject.” —Gareth M. James, University of Southern California and co-author (with Witten, Hastie and Tibshirani) of the best-selling book An Introduction to Statistical Learning, with Applications in R