10 Reasons Why Data Mining is Fun and Rewarding

1. You can train your computer to do things you can't.
2. The methods are complicated, but the applications are intuitive.
3. It can save/make lots of money.
4. Data mining has applications in nearly any area you can think of.
5. You get to deal with data sets larger than you could ever process in your mind.
6. There are big developments taking place in the industry.
7. Data mining algorithms attempt to model how things work in biology and the real world. (ie. Neural networks/genetic algorithms)
8. There is no one size fits all solution when it comes to data mining.
9. You help make the statement "I have more data than I know what to do with" obsolete.
10. Your results can make an immediate impact in whatever industry you are involved in.

Why do you like data mining today? What got you interested in the first place?

Data Mining Search Engine

I recently learned at the Data Mining Research blog about a data mining search engine. The search engine, which can be found here, allows search queries to be performed so that the results come largely from a list of data mining sites. It might prove to be a useful tool for focusing your research on trusted data mining sites, or for discovering new resources in our field of interest. Give it a shot, I don't have much experience with custom Google Search engines, but it seems useful.