Data Mining for Decision Making

By Prof. Varun Dutt | IIT Mandi

Learners enrolled: 582

ABOUT THE COURSE:

The ability to extract meaningful insights from large datasets is becoming increasingly vital across industries. This course on Data Mining for Decision Making equips students with foundational and practical knowledge in mining and analyzing complex data using both statistical and machine learning techniques. Learners will explore tools such as decision trees, neural networks, clustering, regression, principal component analysis, and association rules to uncover patterns and trends in real-world data. The course emphasizes applications in business and management, enabling data-driven decision-making. Students will also engage in hands-on assignments, tutorials, and a project focused on solving real decision problems. By the end of the course, learners will be able to apply data mining tools confidently and critically to support actionable insights

INTENDED AUDIENCE: Computer Science, Data Science, Electrical, Electronics, and other relevant engineering students

INDUSTRY SUPPORT: Meta, Apple, Google, Magic Leap, Microsoft, OpenAI, Sony, etc.

Summary

Course Status :	Upcoming
Course Type :	Elective
Language for course content :	English
Duration :	4 weeks
Category :	Computer Science and Engineering Data Science
Credit Points :	1
Level :	Undergraduate/Postgraduate
Start Date :	16 Feb 2026
End Date :	13 Mar 2026
Enrollment Ends :	16 Feb 2026
Exam Registration Ends :	27 Feb 2026
Exam Date :	25 Apr 2026 IST
NCrF Level	4.5 — 8.0

Note: This exam date is subject to change based on seat availability. You can check final exam date on your hall ticket.

Page Visits

Course layout

Week 1: Introduction to Data Mining, Process, Problem Identification, Preprocessing

Week 2: Naïve Bayes, Decision Trees, Neural Networks

Week 3: Clustering, Logistic & Linear Regression, Principal Component Analysis

Week 4: Association Rules, Model Selection Metrics (AIC, BIC, MDL), Ethics, Real-world applications

Books and references

Berry, M. J. A., & Linoff, G. (2000). Mastering data mining: The art and science of customer relationship management. Wiley.

Delmater, R., & Hancock, M. (2001). Data mining explained: A manager’s guide to customer-centric business intelligence. Digital Press.

Dunham, M. H. (2001). Data mining: Introductory and advanced topics. Pearson Education.

Han, J., Kamber, M., & Pei, J. (2012). Data mining: Concepts and techniques (3rd ed.). Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Hand, D., Mannila, H., & Smyth, P. (2004). Principles of data mining. MIT Press.

Mitchell, T. M. (1997). Machine learning. McGraw-Hill.

Samatova, N. F., Hendrix, W., Jenkins, J., Padmanabhan, K., & Chakraborty, A. (Eds.). (2013). Practical graph mining with R. CRC Press.

Wang, H., & Aggarwal, C. C. (Ed.). (2010). Managing and mining graph data (Vol. 40). Springer.

Instructor bio

Prof. Varun Dutt

IIT Mandi

Prof. Varun Dutt is working as a full professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (IIT Mandi), India, since 2012). Prior to his joining IIT Mandi, Prof. Dutt earned his Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, USA, in 2011. Prof. Dutt pursued his postdoctoral work at the Dynamic Decision Lab, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, in the area of behavioral cyber security from 2011-2012. Prof. Dutt has applied his knowledge and skills in the fields of psychology, public policy, and computer science to explore how humans make decisions on social, cyber-security, and environmental issues. He serves as a senior member of IEEE and as an Associate Editor in several reputed journals like PLoS Computational Biology, Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers in Neuroscience, etc. In the recent past, Prof. Dutt served as a special topics editor in Frontiers in Psychology (Cognitive Science) journal for a special issue on “Application of Cognitive Approaches to Cyber Security.” He has authored more than 320 papers and has received more than 6000 citations around the world.

Course certificate

The course is free to enroll and learn from. But if you want a certificate, you have to register and write the proctored exam conducted by us in person at any of the designated exam centres.

The exam is optional for a fee of Rs 1000/- (Rupees one thousand only).

Date and Time of Exams: April 25, 2026 Morning session 9am to 12 noon; Afternoon Session 2pm to 5pm.

Registration url: Announcements will be made when the registration form is open for registrations.

The online registration form has to be filled and the certification exam fee needs to be paid. More details will be made available when the exam registration form is published. If there are any changes, it will be mentioned then.

Please check the form for more details on the cities where the exams will be held, the conditions you agree to when you fill the form etc.

CRITERIA TO GET A CERTIFICATE

Average assignment score = 25% of average of best 3 assignments out of the total 4 assignments given in the course.
Exam score = 75% of the proctored certification exam score out of 100

Final score = Average assignment score + Exam score

Please note that assignments encompass all types (including quizzes, programming tasks, and essay submissions) available in the specific week.

YOU WILL BE ELIGIBLE FOR A CERTIFICATE ONLY IF AVERAGE ASSIGNMENT SCORE >=10/25 AND EXAM SCORE >= 30/75. If one of the 2 criteria is not met, you will not get the certificate even if the Final score >= 40/100.

Certificate will have your name, photograph and the score in the final exam with the breakup.It will have the logos of NPTEL and IIT Mandi. It will be e-verifiable at nptel.ac.in/noc.

Only the e-certificate will be made available. Hard copies will not be dispatched.

Once again, thanks for your interest in our online courses and certification. Happy learning.

- NPTEL team

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