chance discovery means discovering chances - the breaking points in systems, the marketing windows in business, etc. it involves determining the significance of some piece of information about an event and then using this new knowledge in decision making. the techniques developed combine data mining methods for finding rare but important events with knowledge management, groupware, and social psychology. the reader will find many applications, such as finding information on the internet, recognizing changes in customer behavior, detecting the first signs of an imminent earthquake, etc. this first book dedicated to chance discovery covers the state of the art in the theory and methods and examines typical scenarios, and it thus appeals to researchers working on new techniques and algorithms and also to professionals dealing with real-world applications.