Book Image

Data Smart

By : John W. Foreman
Book Image

Data Smart

By: John W. Foreman

Overview of this book

Data Science gets thrown around in the press like it's magic. Major retailers are predicting everything from when their customers are pregnant to when they want a new pair of Chuck Taylors. It's a brave new world where seemingly meaningless data can be transformed into valuable insight to drive smart business decisions. But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope. Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into actionable insight. And in Data Smart, author and data scientist John Foreman will show you how that's done within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet. Why a spreadsheet? It's comfortable! You get to look at the data every step of the way, building confidence as you learn the tricks of the trade. Plus, spreadsheets are a vendor-neutral place to learn data science without the hype. But don't let the Excel sheets fool you. This is a book for those serious about learning the analytic techniques, math and the magic, behind big data.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Cover
2
Credits
3
About the Author
4
About the Technical Editors
5
Acknowledgments
18
End User License Agreement

Predicting Pregnant Customers at RetailMart Using Linear Regression

Pretend you're a marketing manager at RetailMart's corporate headquarters in charge of infant merchandise. Your job is to help sell more diapers, formula, onesies, cribs, strollers, pacifiers, etc. to new parents, but you have a problem.

You know from focus groups that new parents get into habits with baby products. They find diaper brands they like early on and stores that have the best prices on their brands. They find the pacifier that works with their baby, and they know where to go to get the cheap two-pack. You want RetailMart to be the first store these new parents buy diapers...