It is important to define Data Mining correctly. Many vendors will tell you that drilling down into data is 'mining', this is really 'data discovery'. My definition is that Data Mining involves a product that generates information (rules, trends, patterns, etc.) from data.<br>
The main uses for Data Mining are;<br>
1. Segmentation - identifying similar characteristics of customers that might indicate a propensity to purchase.<br>
2. Clustering - grouping into clusters of alike customers<br>
3. Rule generation - e.g. a neural net that decides whether a customer is a good lead.<br>
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see. SPSS, Angoss KnowledgeSeeker, Model-1 and others.