[CR has previously published a review of this book (see Review CR142449). The author of the book has written a rebuttal to the review. A re-rebuttal by the reviewer (see Review CR142812) follows the rebuttal.]

Bellin has not done his homework on this review. Let’s begin with the author, who he says is a Brazilian professor. On the back cover of the book, it states that I am a contract researcher based at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. A little more checking up would have found that I am originally from the UK. Also, the front cover clearly states that the book is part of “The Savvy Manager’s Guide” series, designed for an audience of data mining professionals in business and IT. Hence, it is not designed as a course textbook or academic work. This is not to say that it could not be used as complementary reading for an appropriate course.

Next, with reference to academic research, I have over 50 publications in journals indexed in Web of Science, other journals, congresses, and workshops. One of the key factors today is technology transfer, getting the know-how out of the university and into the business sector, and this book is designed for this purpose.

The four online chapters were a publishing decision to reduce costs and to keep the printed page count within the “Manager’s Guide” series style. Also, current trends demonstrate that book sales are increasingly more often in e-book format. The connection between the order of the topics and the chapter sequencing was carefully planned. Chapters 1 to 10 follow the recommended sequence of development of a data mining project; chapters 11 to 13 deal with themes strongly related to commercial data mining; and chapters 14 to 17 are grouped around the theme of data mining on the Internet.

With reference to the legal and ethical aspects, chapter 18 deals in detail with the theme of data privacy, in contrast with many data mining technical books, which don’t cover this issue at all.

Bellin mentions that there are two superficial case studies, whereas in reality the book has three major, detailed case studies in the appendix, derived from real projects, which cross-reference the material seen throughout the book.

I strongly disagree with Bellin’s statement that the book will not help practitioners, and one can only conclude that the reviewer is not familiar with what data mining practitioners need.

Finally, after reading Bellin’s review, I am left with the impression that he only read the chapter index and based the review on that.