Data Mining

Data mining is the process of analyzing data sets in order to find patterns such as correlations, anomalies and outliers. Many different techniques can be used in this process, depending on the nature of the data and/or the goals that you want to achieve with the analysis. For example, scientists can use data mining to investigate empirical data and understand natural phenomena, and companies can increase revenues, cut costs, improve customer relationships, and reduce risks. This course provides an introduction to data mining and its applications, such as search engines, text mining, and exploratory analysis. We discuss techniques to find similar things, e.g., documents and images; the analysis of social networks and graphs in general; the extraction of structured information from text; and tools and software libraries for data mining, among other topics. It is a very practical hands-on course, where the students learn not only the theory behind data mining but also its application in practical exercises and projects.