Data mining applications: promise and challenges

Data mining is an emerging field gaining acceptance in research and industry. This is evidenced by an increasing number of research publications, conferences, journals and industry initiatives focused in this field in the recent past. Data mining aims to solve an intricate problem faced by a number of application domains today with the deluge of data that exists and is continually collected, typically, in large electronic databases. That is, to extract useful, meaningful knowledge from these vast data sets. Human analytical capabilities are limited, especially in its ability to analyse large and complex data sets. Data mining provides a number of tools and techniques that enables analysis of such data sets. Data mining incorporates techniques from a number of fields including statistics, machine learning, database management, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and data visualisation.