1. Data Analytics Made Accessible
Author: Anil Maheshwari
Why it’s a good read: A great book for someone who is completely new to data science and analytics.
Excerpt: “This book fills the need for a concise and conversational book on the hot and growing field of Data Science. Easy to read and informative, this lucid book covers everything important, with concrete examples, and invites the reader to join this field. The chapters in the book are organized for a typical one-semester course. The book contains case-lets from real-world stories at the beginning of every chapter. There is also a running case study across the chapters as exercises. This book is designed to provide a student with the intuition behind this evolving area, along with a solid toolset of the major data mining techniques and platforms.”
2. Behind Every Good Decision: How Anyone Can Use Business Analytics to Turn Data into Profitable Insight
Author: Piyanka Jain and Puneet Sharma
Why it’s a good read: Written for executives and managers to understand how business analytics fit into a framework for solving business problems.
Excerpt: “So you’re not a numbers person? No worries! You say that you can’t understand how to read, let alone implement, these complex software programs that crunch all the data and spit out . . . more data? Not a problem either! There is a costly misconception in business today–that the only data that matters is BIG data, and that elaborate tools and data scientists are required to extract any practical information.”
3. Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Author: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Why it’s a good read: It provides a new view of what big data is, and how it was used in data analysis.
Excerpt: “From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than 20 years ago seemed unfathomable. Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender, and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives, and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?”
4. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die
Author: Eric Siegel
Why it’s a good read: It addresses many ways in which predictive analytics are being used to try to anticipate the future in business, health care, public safety, and social science.
Excerpt: “An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating — surprisingly accessible — introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a “how to” for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques. Prediction is booming. It reinvents industries and runs the world. Companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities are seizing upon the power. These institutions predict whether you’re going to click, buy, lie, or die.”
5. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals
Author: Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
Why it’s a good read: It’s packed full of practical advice aimed at making your charts and accompanying stories more visually pleasing and impactful.
Excerpt: “Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You’ll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation. Storytelling is not an inherent skill, especially when it comes to data visualization, and the tools at our disposal don’t make it any easier. This book demonstrates how to go beyond conventional tools to reach the root of your data, and how to use your data to create an engaging, informative, compelling story.”
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