Introduction to Data Mining: Pang-Ning Tan, Michael Steinbach, Vipin Kumar: 9780136954712: Amazon.com: Books

We used this book in a class which was my first academic introduction to data mining. The book's strengths are that it does a good job covering the field as it was around the 2008-2009 timeframe. Included are discussions of exploring data, classification, clustering, association analysis, cluster analysis, and anomaly detection. Additional bonus appendices cover some elements of linear algebra, dimensionality reduction, probability and statistics, regression analysis, and optimization, in case those concepts are fuzzy for the student. They're by no means thorough enough to learn the topic, merely to remind the reader of salient points they should remember.