first, you need to grok the basics http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning but data mining can't be

first, you need to grok the basics http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning but data mining can't be learned from a passive standpoint. You need to find a large dataset http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/ http://aws.amazon.com/publicdatasets/ and try to do something with it. I've been pleased with http://neuroph.sourceforge.net/ http://neuroph.sourceforge.net/ for a lot of the stuff I do.