A Programmer’s Guide to Data Mining – The Ancient Art of the Numerati by Ron Zacharski.
From the webpage:
Before you is a tool for learning basic data mining techniques. Most data mining textbooks focus on providing a theoretical foundation for data mining, and as result, may seem notoriously difficult to understand. Don’t get me wrong, the information in those books is extremely important. However, if you are a programmer interested in learning a bit about data mining you might be interested in a beginner’s hands-on guide as a first step. That’s what this book provides.
This guide follows a learn-by-doing approach. Instead of passively reading the book, I encourage you to work through the exercises and experiment with the Python code I provide. I hope you will be actively involved in trying out and programming data mining techniques. The textbook is laid out as a series of small steps that build on each other until, by the time you complete the book, you have laid the foundation for understanding data mining techniques. This book is available for download for free under a Creative Commons license (see link in footer). You are free to share the book, and remix it. Someday I may offer a paper copy, but the online version will always be free.
If you are looking for explanations of data mining that fall between the “dummies” variety and arXiv.org papers, you are at the right place!
Not new information but well presented information, always a rare thing.
Take the time to read this book.
If not for the content, to get some ideas on how to improve your next book.