Please cite as: Ritschard, G, R. B¨ urgin and M. Studer (2013). Exploratory Mining of Life Event Histories. In J.J. McArdle & G. Ritschard (eds), Contemporary Issues in Exploratory Data Mining in Behavioral Sciences, Routeledge, New York, pages 221–253 Exploratory Mining of Life Event Histories Gilbert Ritschard, Reto B¨ urgin and Matthias Studer Abstract This chapter explains how data-mining-based techniques can be used for discovering interesting knowledge from sequences of life events, that is, to find out how people sequence important life events. We illustrate with data from the biographical survey conducted by the Swiss Household Panel in 2002. The focus is on the sequencing of events in the occupational life course and of events such as starting a union and childbirth that affect the living arrangement. Addressed methods include finding of frequent sequential patterns, identification of discriminant subsequences and clustering of event sequences. 1