An overview of data mining and knowledge discovery

With massive amounts of data stored in databases, mining information and knowledge in databases has become an important issue in recent research. Researchers in many different fields have shown great interest in data mining and knowledge discovery in databases. Several emerging applications in information providing services, such as data warehousing and on-line services over the Internet, also call for various data mining and knowledge discovery techniques to understand user behavior better, to improve the service provided, and to increase the business opportunities. In response to such a demand, this article is to provide a comprehensive survey on the data mining and knowledge discovery techniques developed recently, and introduce some real application systems as well. In conclusion, this article also lists some problems and challenges for further research.