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

Before You Go-Go

I want to use this conclusion to offer up some thoughts about what it means to practice data science in the real world, because merely knowing the math isn't enough.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. My quantitative skills are middling, but I've seen folks much smarter than I fail mightily at working as analytics professionals. The problem is that while they're brilliant, they don't know the little things that can cause technical endeavors to fail within the business environment. So let's cover these softer items that can mean the success or failure of your analytics project or career.

Get to Know the Problem

My favorite movie of all time is the 1992 film Sneakers. The movie centers on a band of penetration testers led by Robert Redford that steals a “black box” capable of cracking RSA encryption. Hijinks ensue. (If you haven't watched it, I envy you, because you have an opportunity...