Data mining involves sorting through large datasets to identify patterns and relationships. It is used to predict future trends through data analysis. The goal of data mining is extracting patterns from data, not extracting the data itself. It is an interdisciplinary field that uses computer science and statistics to extract useful information from datasets. Data mining is part of the knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) process, which involves data preparation, cleansing, modeling, and interpreting results to extract useful knowledge from data. The difference between data mining and data analysis is that data analysis summarizes past data while data mining focuses on using models to predict the future.