DM: RE:

[Abraham Meidan]

2. Are any of you aware of public domain datamining 
        software? Failing that, very reasonably priced
        data mining software?

3. Are any of you aware of any industrial strength data
        mining packages that would be deeply discounted
        for educational institution use?

[]  You may consider WizSoft's data mining products --
(1) WizWhy for revealing rules and issuing predictions
(2) WizRule for revealing rules and discovering errors.

Both products --
1. Reads ASCII, dBase, Access and any ODBC compliant database
2. Reveals ALL if-then rules (Association rules)
3. Reveals mathematical formula rules
4. Run on Win 95 / Win NT

Both products have full working demo versions that are limited by the 
number of records (WizWhy - 250 records, WizRule - 1,000 records). 
These demo versions may be used in order to teach data mining.

The prices of the full versions are --
WizWhy - $ 3,995
WizRule - $ 1,395
However, as an educational institution you are entitled for a 90% 
discount, and so in your case the prices are:
WizWhy - $ 399
WizRule - $ 139

Best regards,
Abraham