Abstract
One good characterization of science is that it is the systematic
study of some phenomena. Under this liberal view, knowledge discovery
in science is not fundamentally different from discovery in other
fields that are not labelled scientific (business, say). Science's
deserved reputation for finding reliable knowledge owes more to the
perseverance of its practitioners and to its organizational checks and
balances than to the use of any special method. Thus, insights gained
from developing discovery tools in science, which has such refined
criteria of success, can guide knowledge discovery as a whole. This
article aims to present some basic concepts about knowledge discovery,
convey the state of the art by reporting on success stories, and
suggest lessons that are relevant to application areas besides
science.
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