Book excerpt: As business becomes increasingly complex and global, decision-makers must act more rapidly and accurately, based on the best available evidence. Modern data mining and analytics is indispensable for doing this. Real-World Data Mining demystifies current best practices, showing how to use data mining and analytics to uncover hidden patterns and correlations, and leverage these to improve all business decision-making. Drawing on extensive experience as a researcher, practitioner, and instructor, Dr. Dursun Delen delivers an optimal balance of concepts, techniques and applications. Without compromising either simplicity or clarity, Delen provides enough technical depth to help readers truly understand how data mining technologies work. Coverage includes: data mining processes, methods, and techniques; the role and management of data; tools and metrics; text and web mining; sentiment analysis; and integration with cutting-edge Big Data approaches. Throughout, Delen's conceptual coverage is complemented with application case studies (examples of both successes and failures), as well as simple, hands-on tutorials.