This document provides an introduction to data mining. It discusses why organizations mine data from both a commercial and scientific viewpoint. Large amounts of data are being collected but not fully analyzed. Data mining can help discover useful patterns and information that is hidden within large datasets. The document defines data mining and differentiates it from simple queries. It outlines some common data mining tasks like classification, clustering, association rule mining, and their applications. Overall, the document serves as a high-level overview of the key concepts and motivations behind data mining.