Book Image

Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel - Second Edition

By : Gordon S. S. Linoff
Book Image

Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel - Second Edition

By: Gordon S. S. Linoff

Overview of this book

Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel, 2nd Edition shows you how to leverage the two most popular tools for data query and analysis—SQL and Excel—to perform sophisticated data analysis without the need for complex and expensive data mining tools. Written by a leading expert on business data mining, this book shows you how to extract useful business information from relational databases. You'll learn the fundamental techniques before moving into the "where" and "why" of each analysis, and then learn how to design and perform these analyses using SQL and Excel. Examples include SQL and Excel code, and the appendix shows how non-standard constructs are implemented in other major databases, including Oracle and IBM DB2/UDB. The companion website includes datasets and Excel spreadsheets, and the book provides hints, warnings, and technical asides to help you every step of the way. Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel, 2nd Edition shows you how to perform a wide range of sophisticated analyses using these simple tools, sparing you the significant expense of proprietary data mining tools like SAS.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Foreword
17
EULA

Lookup Model for Most Popular Product

A lookup model partitions the data into non-overlapping groups, and then assigns a constant value within each group. Lookup models do not look like fancy statistical models, because they pre-calculate all the possible scores, rather than estimating coefficients for a complicated equation.

The first example of a lookup model finds the most popular product group in a zip code using the purchases data. This model is a profiling model, as opposed to a predictive model.

Most Popular Product

The most popular product group in a zip code is easy to determine. The model itself is a lookup table with two columns: a zip code and a product group. Using the model simply requires looking up the appropriate value in the table, using the customer’s zip code.

Once upon a time, a company was customizing its email offers. One of the things known about prospects was their zip codes. The marketing idea was to customize each email by including information about...