Data mining is the science of extracting meaningful and potentially
useful knowledge from (large) datasets. It has emerged as a young
inter-disciplinary field in computer science in the past decade.
A wide range of data mining techniques have been developed and applied
to applications in industry, science, engineering, and government.
Many believe that data mining will have a long-lasting and profound
impact on our society.
In this talk, I will introduce you to this new field from several
aspects. First, I will identify the driving forces behind this new
field. I will also address basic questions such as "What is data
mining?", "What is a general data mining process like?", and "Who are
doing data mining?". Second, I will identify a list of main data mining
techniques and explain each of them using real-world applications.
Finally, I will discuss the main challenges one may encounter in the
mining process.
At the end of the talk, I will briefly go over several of my on-going
research projects at San Francisco State University, in which you may
play an active role in the future.
