How do you learn data mining?

In data mining, as in many other fields, people come from a wide range of horizons. This is quite normal since data mining is an interdisciplinary field. People working in this area may come from machine learning (research), statistics, business intelligence or a related field in industry, etc. Today, I'm interested to know how you have learnt (and continue to learn) data mining.

For that, you can answer the poll below. The question is: How do you learn data mining? Note that multiple answers are possible.

Since this list is not comprehensive, feel free to suggest other ways of learning. Each of you certainly has his own experience in how to understand such a field. So, in addition to answering the poll, you can comment the post.

Continue reading... Sphere: Related Content

One definition of learning

In the data mining (or machine learning) community, as you can expect, the term learning is often used. As a consequence, it is explained in many books, mainly with different definitions. Therefore, it is often difficult to find a clear and understandable definition for the term learning. Across my readings, I found the following definition as the most clear one:

"Learning is the improvement of performance in some environment through the acquisition of knowledge resulting from experience in that environment" (1)

Although very informal, it explains clearly the meaning of learning for the data mining community.

(1) Langley P., Elements of machine learning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1996.

Continue reading... Sphere: Related Content