Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal-processing techniques are the prominent role in the detection and prediction of epileptic seizures. The detection of epileptic activity is cumbersome and needs a detailed analysis of the EEG data. Therefore, an efficient method for classifying EEG data is required. In this work, a constructive pattern recognition strategy for analysing EEG data as normal and epileptic seizure has been proposed. With this strategy, the signals were decomposed into frequency sub-bands using discrete wavelet transform (DWT). principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) are applied to reduce the dimensionality of EEG data. These reduced features were used as input to Naïve Bayes and K-Nearest Neighbour Classifier to classify normal or epileptic seizure signal. The performance of classifier was evaluated in terms of accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. The experimental results show that PCA with Naïve Bayes classifier provides 98.6% accuracy and LDA with Naïve Bayes classifier attains improved result of 99.8% accuracy. Also, the result shows that PCA, LDA with K-NN achieves 98.5% and 100% accuracy. This evaluation is used to propose a reliable, practical epilepsy detection method to enhance the patient’s care and quality of life. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.