Book Image

Java Data Analysis

By : John R. Hubbard
Book Image

Java Data Analysis

By: John R. Hubbard

Overview of this book

Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the aim of discovering useful information. Java is one of the most popular languages to perform your data analysis tasks. This book will help you learn the tools and techniques in Java to conduct data analysis without any hassle. After getting a quick overview of what data science is and the steps involved in the process, you’ll learn the statistical data analysis techniques and implement them using the popular Java APIs and libraries. Through practical examples, you will also learn the machine learning concepts such as classification and regression. In the process, you’ll familiarize yourself with tools such as Rapidminer and WEKA and see how these Java-based tools can be used effectively for analysis. You will also learn how to analyze text and other types of multimedia. Learn to work with relational, NoSQL, and time-series data. This book will also show you how you can utilize different Java-based libraries to create insightful and easy to understand plots and graphs. By the end of this book, you will have a solid understanding of the various data analysis techniques, and how to implement them using Java.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Java Data Analysis
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
Index

Origins of data analysis


Data is as old as civilization itself, maybe even older. The 17,000-year-old paintings in the Lascaux caves in France could well have been attempts by those primitive dwellers to record their greatest hunting triumphs. Those records provide us with data about humanity in the Paleolithic era. That data was not analyzed, in the modern sense, to obtain new knowledge. But its existence does attest to the need humans have to preserve their ideas in data.

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia recorded far more important data on clay tablets. That cuneiform writing included substantial accounting data about daily business transactions. To apply that data, the Sumerians invented not only text writing, but also the first number system.

In 1086, King William the Conqueror ordered a massive collection of data to determine the extent of the lands and properties of the crown and of his subjects. This was called the Domesday Book, because it was a final tallying of people's (material) lives. That data was analyzed to determine ownership and tax obligations for centuries to follow.