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

What Is a Customer Signature?

A customer signature is a row in a table that describes many aspects of customers—behavior, demographics, neighborhoods, and so on. This section introduces customer signatures, how they are used, and why they are important. The process of building them should make it possible to reconstruct what customers look like at any point in the past. This may be a snapshot on the same date for all customers, or a different date for each customer, such as one year after the customer starts, when the customer makes a second visit, when the customer purchases a particular product, or when the customer enrolls in the loyalty program.

Customer signatures summarize longitudinal information as a snapshot...