Keith McCormick is an independent data mining consultant, trainer, and author. He's been using SPSS Statistics and SPSS Modeler for many years, but is interested in all aspects of Data Mining, Statistics, and Predictive Analytics.
I just went through chapter 1 and found it a great journey to go through each example. Of course, for doing so I had to download the huge file from the website – but it pays off well. The recipes are provided with a form of rigor, and at the same time appropriate precautions on using these recipes are given (which I love). The description of each example is detailed just enough to keep me move along without becoming tedious… So far I've liked it very much, and I also enjoy the way how each example is given as a preview of more elaborated illustration in later chapters, so that I know what I shall be looking forward to when going further with this book.
There are a few neat things that someone might not figure out for themselves. This book provides a good indication of how well using canned software packages like modeler or e-miner are at teaching predictive analytics, but also how unscalable they would be for large enterprise solutions that require more sophisticated customization, and efficient code design. I'm not sure about E-miner but Modeler has horrible memory leaks and gives errors that provide you no guidance for determining what the problem really is so you can account for it in actual code. The best thing about Modeler is you can incorporate R and Python.
This book guides you through why and how to do the right stats test for your data, using SPSS using everyday examples and step-by-step instructions so you can understand the results. Written in an easy style you can learn lots of practical skills about a specific test quickly without having to have read every preceding chapter. Having read lots of stats books this is the easiest to use to get useful results quickly without having to becoming a stats expert beforehand. http://bit.ly/1abrhkI
Good comprehensive reference took me through the basic and advanced. A very practical guide with good step-by-step examples. A good read and a good cookbook!