Mining for treasures of information: data mining

Data mining is relatively new in data analysis. It is a process that is used to explore and analyze large quantities of data in order to discover meaningful patterns or rules by automatic or semi-automatic means. Currently information-rich sectors benefit from this and most significant and hence profitable applications are in marketing. Data mining is introduced in this article. Some important applications are discussed and common techniques described. A small application in agricultural research is illustrated and current status of data mining discussed.