Data mining
by I. H. Witten, Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank · first published 1999
64% recommend29% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
A practical, readable introduction to data mining with little math and plenty of real-world discussion. It serves as a solid starting point for beginners and pairs well with the Weka toolkit.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"This book offers a thorough grounding in machine learning concepts as well as practical advice on applying machine learning tools and techniques in real-world data mining situations. Inside, you'll learn all you need to know about preparing inputs, interpreting outputs, evaluating results, and the algorithmic methods at the heart of successful data mining - including both tried-and-true techniques of the past and Java-based methods at the leading edge of contemporary research. If you're involved at any level in the work of extracting usable knowledge from large collections of data, this clear
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…OP: Are you asking how basic tf-idf works, or is there something you can't get lucene / SOLR / sphinx / tsearch to do easily? nevertheless, here are some good background materials (search amazon on "data mining" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584504609 http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag... Also the Collective intelligence by Satnam alag is quite good (a lot of java code to wade…
on “Ask HN: Is there any one book or resource on search engine development & theory?” ↗If you want a "less math" machine learning book, I like these two: Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Third Edition Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, Mark A. Hall http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag... Machine Learning: An Algorithmic…
on “Ask: Is there a "Machine Learning for Dummies"?” ↗…also some books for people who haven't the rigorous math background yet are Intro Statistical Learning (James et al), the ones by Peter Flach, Steven Marsland, and Witten/Franke: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag... http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Learning-Algorithmic-Perspecti...
on “Ask HN: Can I get into machine learning research after getting my medical degree?” ↗some other helpful books: - Data Mining, by Witten and Franke; describes basics with rigor, including how to use Weka, which they wrote http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag... a couple java-based books from Manning:…
on “Ask HN: Statistics for hackers?” ↗I recommend starting with weka and this great book: http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Practical-Techniques-Manag...
on “Ask HN: I want to learn statistics and data mining” ↗…something if it doesn't involve HTTP, a programming language that's currently en vogue, JavaScript, or relational databases (really only MySQL or maybe Postgres). If you're interested in an introductory data mining book with a practical focus, may I instead suggest Witten and Frank's "Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques"? It uses Weka throughout, which is mature and nice.
on “New Book from O'Reilly: Programming Collective Intelligence” ↗Some other helpful books: - Data Mining, by Witten and Franke; describes basics , how to use Weka, which they wrote a couple java-based books from Manning: - Collective Intelligence in Action (by Satnam Alag) and - Algorithms of the Intelligent…
on “Ask HN: Building a domain-specific search engine. Advice, experiences?” ↗A fair question. There are duplicates (Witten and Frank's "Data Mining", which is excellent), and some of the books he lists as favorites I would say are utter garbage. Some of them are so bad, I don't see how anybody smart could have read them and concluded they were worth…
on “Peter Norvig's Library” ↗…(and other clustering) Be sure to emphasize cross validation or a holdout set to evaluate all these models. The new edition of the "WEKA" book would be a nice text, rather than the original papers. Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Third Edition Ian H. Witten, Eibe Frank, Mark A. Hall
on “Ask HN: Machine learning in 5 papers. What should they be?” ↗I recommend starting with Witten and Frank's "Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques", for two reasons: 1) your mathematical background will make it easy for you to spot the areas where they gloss over important theoretical details (e.g.…
on “Ask HN: Machine Learning? Where to start?” ↗I still think Peter Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence" book plus a good book on Data Mining (someone suggested Frank and Witten above) might deliver more value than this. As Henning pointed out above , there aren't enough pages to cover even a few of the topics properly. It looks like the…
on “New Book from O'Reilly: Programming Collective Intelligence” ↗You could do a purely applied approach, look at some Data Mining books, like Witten/Franke and the Weka java framwork (there's quite a few good books, check amazon reviews, ) and the assortment of methods that are applied from basic logit/probits, through clustering,…
on “Ask HN: Independent Math Study” ↗- Modern Information Retrieval by Baeza Yates - Data Mining Book by Jiawei Han et al - Managing Gigabytes by Witten et al - Hypertext Mining book by Chakrabarti
on “Ask HN: Best Text Mining Resources” ↗Definitely depends on your math background (knowledge of analysis and linear algebra seems to be particularly helpful). Witten's Data Mining is a very good beginner's book (has very little math, but lots of good explanations and discussion of real life issues). Bishop's book is excellent, but it's easy to get lost if you don't have the mathematical…
on “Machine learning toolkit” ↗…a lot! Can I ask you a more detailed question? Can you suggest resources to tackle machine learning and statistical inference of patterns in data? I am currently going through (http://www.amazon.com/Data-Mining-Techniques-Implementations...) and there is so much depth in it that I want to understand. This is why I wanted to strengthen my fundamentals first before moving on to the fancy stuff. If you're in this…
on “Ask HN: How Do I Get Math?” ↗