At the top layer of the DM literature one fi nds books about the use of DM. Several are exhortations to managers and employees to revolutionize their fi rms by embracing DM or “business analytics” as a business strategy. That’s not our goal, however. What this book provides is a brief, nontechnical introduction to DM for people who are interested in using it to analyze quantitative data but who don’t yet know much about these methods. Our primary goal is to explain what DM does and how it diff ers from more familiar or established kinds of statistical analysis and modeling, and to provide a sense of DM’s strengths and weaknesses. To communicate those ideas, this book begins by discussing DM in general, especially its distinctive perspective on data analysis. Later, it introduces the main methods or tools within DM.
