Web Data Mining and Applications in Business Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism

Rating:
Summary: Informative book
Review: Author has a very easy to read writing style and I enjoyed reading this book. However the author has a tendency to repeat certain points and over emphasize certain other aspects. A very good overview of data mining and counter-terrorism. Would have liked to have seen more details on applying data mining for counter-terrorism. This part of the book while clear could have had more details.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Dr. Thuraisingham has produced one of the first books in the field. She goes step by step in explaining concepts in data mining, web data mining, counter-terrorism and applications of
data mining to national security. While the topics are discussed at a high level, it provides a broad and very good overview of the issues and challanges. She shows how techniques such as association rule mining and link analysis may be applied to detect unusual patterns. She is also very aware of the privacy concerns that arise due to data mining and provides an excellent discussion on privacy and national security.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview
Review: High level book, but provides a detailed discussion of data mining and its applications to counterterrorism. Although there is some hand waving on certain aspects such as threat types, the use of data mining is extremely thought provoking. Only book that addresses privacy as well as data mining.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing how someone can turn 50 pages to 500 pages
Review: I am amazed how someone can write 500 pages about a 50 pages subject. The only thing that the book does not cover is counter-terrorism. Too many unrelated drawings to fill pages, too many times reapting the same subject with different heading. Just assembling bunch of un-related stuff in a book.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing how someone can turn 50 pages to 500 pages
Review: I am amazed how someone can write 500 pages about a 50 pages subject. The only thing that the book does not cover is counter-terrorism. Too many unrelated drawings to fill pages, too many times reapting the same subject with different heading. Just assembling bunch of un-related stuff in a book.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting Book
Review: I am new to the field of data mining and this book provides a very good overview of data mining and web mining. It also provides some discussion on counter-terrorism and shows at a very high level how data mining could be applied for counter-terrorism. I would have liked to have seen more details step by step how data mining techniques could be used for this purpose. I understand that this is a new area and the author has done a good job in explaining the issues and concepts. Perhaps as the field matures a book discussing the algorithms and applications would be beneficial especially for the analysts who will be using the tools.

Rating:
Summary: Very timely and interesting
Review: I liked this book the best among all the books written by this Dr. Thuraisingham. It is extremely timely. The author considers web mining to include data mining and stresses that web mining could be carried out on the Internet, Intranets and corporate nets both private and public. There is a good overview of the threats and she shows how web mining may be applied to handle the threats. This is a very new field for many and therefore provides very enlightening reading. However one can expect the field to advance very rapidly which means another edition will be soon needed.

Rating:
Summary: Timely and useful
Review: This book is extremely timely. It discusses a great deal about data mining and in some detail the applications in counter-terrorism. As stated in the preface, it is written at a high level for managers and will be a useful reference. It does not however go into the details of how data mining tools could be applied for national security applications. Perhaps the field it too new. It discusses the concerns that civil liberties unions have on privacy and shows how privacy may be maintained while carrying out data mining. On the whole it is a very good book.