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

About the Technical Editors

Greg Jennings is a data scientist, software engineer, and co-founder of ApexVis. After completing a master's degree in materials science from the University of Virginia, he began his career with the Analytics group of Booz Allen Hamilton, where he grew a team providing predictive analytics and data visualization solutions for planning and scheduling problems.

After leaving Booz Allen Hamilton, Greg cofounded his first startup, Decision Forge, where he served as CTO and helped develop a web-based data mining platform for a government client. He also worked with a major media organization to develop an educational product that assists teachers in accessing targeted content for their students, and with a McLean-based startup to help develop audience modeling applications to optimize web advertising campaigns.

After leaving Decision Forge, he cofounded his current business ApexVis, focused on helping enterprises get maximum value from their data through...