Book Image

Learning Predictive Analytics with R

By : Eric Mayor
Book Image

Learning Predictive Analytics with R

By: Eric Mayor

Overview of this book

This book is packed with easy-to-follow guidelines that explain the workings of the many key data mining tools of R, which are used to discover knowledge from your data. You will learn how to perform key predictive analytics tasks using R, such as train and test predictive models for classification and regression tasks, score new data sets and so on. All chapters will guide you in acquiring the skills in a practical way. Most chapters also include a theoretical introduction that will sharpen your understanding of the subject matter and invite you to go further. The book familiarizes you with the most common data mining tools of R, such as k-means, hierarchical regression, linear regression, association rules, principal component analysis, multilevel modeling, k-NN, Naïve Bayes, decision trees, and text mining. It also provides a description of visualization techniques using the basic visualization tools of R as well as lattice for visualizing patterns in data organized in groups. This book is invaluable for anyone fascinated by the data mining opportunities offered by GNU R and its packages.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Learning Predictive Analytics with R
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Exercises and Solutions
Index

About the Reviewers

Ajay Dhamija is a senior scientist in the Defence Research and Development Organization, Delhi. He has more than 24 years of experience as a researcher and an instructor. He holds an MTech (in computer science and engineering) from IIT Delhi and an MBA (in finance and strategy) from FMS, Delhi. He has to his credit more than 14 research works of international reputation in various fields, including data mining, reverse engineering, analytics, neural network simulation, TRIZ, and so on. He was instrumental in developing a state-of-the-art Computerized Pilot Selection System (CPSS) containing various cognitive and psycho-motor tests. It is used to comprehensively assess the flying aptitude of aspiring pilots of the Indian Air Force. Ajay was honored with an Agni Award for excellence in self reliance in 2005 by the Government of India. He specializes in predictive analytics, information security, big data analytics, machine learning, Bayesian social networks, financial modeling, neuro-fuzzy simulation, and data analysis and data mining using R. He is presently involved in his doctoral work on Financial Modeling of Carbon Finance Data from IIT, Delhi. He has written an international bestseller, Forecasting Exchange Rate: Use of Neural Networks in Quantitative Finance (http://www.amazon.com/Forecasting-Exchange-rate-Networks-Quantitative/dp/3639161807), and is currently authoring another book in R named Multivariate Analysis using R.

Apart from Analytics, Ajay Dhamija is actively involved in information security research. He has been associated with various international and national researchers in the government as well as the corporate sector to pursue his research on ways to amalgamate two important and contemporary fields of data handling, that is, predictive analytics and information security. While he was associated with researchers from the Predictive Analytics and Information Security Institute of India (PRAISIA: www.praisia.com) during his research endeavors, he worked on refining methods of big data analytics for security data analysis (log assessment, incident analysis, threat prediction, and so on) and vulnerability management automation.

You can connect with Ajay at:

  • LinkedIn: ajaykumardhamija

  • ResearchGate: Ajay_Dhamija2

  • Academia: ajaydhamija

  • Facebook: akdhamija

  • Twitter:@akdhamija

  • Quora: Ajay-Dhamija

Matt Wiley is a tenured associate professor of mathematics who currently resides in Victoria, Texas. He holds degrees in mathematics (with a computer science minor) from the University of California and a master's degree in business administration from Texas A&M University. He directs the Quality Enhancement Plan at Victoria College and is the managing partner at Elkhart Group Limited, a statistical consultancy. With programming experience in R, C++, Ruby, Fortran, and JavaScript, he has always found ways to meld his passion for writing with his love of logical problem solving and data science. From the boardroom to the classroom, Matt enjoys finding dynamic ways to partner with interdisciplinary and diverse teams to make complex ideas and projects understandable and solvable.

Matt can be found online at www.MattWiley.org.

Khaled Tannir is a visionary solution architect with more than 20 years of technical experience focusing on big data technologies and data mining since 2010.

He is widely recognized as an expert in these fields and has a bachelor's degree in electronics and a master's degree in system information architectures. He completed his education with a master of research degree.

Khaled is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) and an avid technologist. He has worked for many companies in France (and recently in Canada), leading the development and implementation of software solutions and giving technical presentations.

He is the author of the books RavenDB 2.x Beginner's Guide and Optimizing Hadoop MapReduce, Packt Publishing, and a technical reviewer on the books Pentaho Analytics for MongoDB and MongoDB High Availability, Packt Publishing.

He enjoys taking landscape and night photos, traveling, playing video games, creating funny electronics gadgets using Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and .Net Gadgeteer, and of course spending time with his wife and family.

You can reach him at [email protected].