Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Good intro to data visualization for novices.

Westphal and Blaxton do a good job of introducing data mining concepts, but focus too heavily on data visualization techniques. A large chunk of the book is devoted to tool walk throughs, information that will be outdated soon. The case studies cover several industries, but fail to show the authors' methodology in action. The greatest shortcoming is the EXTREMELY brief discussion on neural networks, genetic algorithms and other non-visual analytic methods. If you are a beginner in data visualization, buy this book. Anyone looking for in depth (or even an intro) discussion on AI and statistics, look elsewhere.