Data mining and knowledge discovery in databases have been attracting a significant amount of research, industry, and media attention of late. What is all the excitement about? This article provides an overview of this emerging field, clarifying how data mining and knowledge discovery in databases are related both to each other and to related fields, such as machine learning, statistics, and databases. In the last few years, knowledge discovery and data mining tools have been used mainly in experimental and research environments, business user etc. A large degree of the current interest in KDD is the result of the media interest surrounding successful KDD applications, for example, the focus articles within the last two years in Business Week, Newsweek, Byte, PC Week, and other large-circulation periodicals. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to separate fact from media hype. Nonetheless, several well documented examples of successful systems can rightly be referred to as KDD applications and have been deployed in operational use on large-scale real-world problems in science and in business.