So far, we have seen in detail how extracting value from data should be considered an iterative process that consists of a number of phases. It is important to have a clear business objective as well as continued involvement of key people throughout the process. The important point is that the bulk of data mining is about data cleaning, exploration, and understanding, which means it is important to make this clear at the beginning to avoid disappointment.

Having seen some of the aspects of data cleaning, exploring, and understanding, you recognize some of the practical issues you have faced that have prevented you from getting value out of your data.

Without further ado, let's get straight onto the next logical step: importing data. RapidMiner provides many ways to do this and these are covered in Chapter 2, Loading Data.