Book Image

Introduction to R for Business Intelligence

By : Jay Gendron
Book Image

Introduction to R for Business Intelligence

By: Jay Gendron

Overview of this book

Explore the world of Business Intelligence through the eyes of an analyst working in a successful and growing company. Learn R through use cases supporting different functions within that company. This book provides data-driven and analytically focused approaches to help you answer questions in operations, marketing, and finance. In Part 1, you will learn about extracting data from different sources, cleaning that data, and exploring its structure. In Part 2, you will explore predictive models and cluster analysis for Business Intelligence and analyze financial times series. Finally, in Part 3, you will learn to communicate results with sharp visualizations and interactive, web-based dashboards. After completing the use cases, you will be able to work with business data in the R programming environment and realize how data science helps make informed decisions and develops business strategy. Along the way, you will find helpful tips about R and Business Intelligence.

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Introduction to R for Business Intelligence
Jay Gendron
Aug, 2016 | 228 pages
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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Introduction to R for Business Intelligence
Introduction to R for Business Intelligence
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
Acknowledgement
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Extract, Transform, and Load
Extract, Transform, and Load
Understanding big data in BI analytics
Extracting data from sources
Transforming data to fit analytic needs
Loading data into business systems for analysis
Summary
2
Data Cleaning
Data Cleaning
Summarizing your data for inspection
Finding and fixing flawed data
Converting inputs to data types suitable for analysis
Adapting string variables to a standard
Summary
3
Exploratory Data Analysis
Exploratory Data Analysis
Understanding exploratory data analysis
Analyzing a single data variable
Analyzing two variables together
Exploring multiple variables simultaneously
Summary
4
Linear Regression for Business
Linear Regression for Business
Understanding linear regression
Checking model assumptions
Using a simple linear regression
Refining data for simple linear regression
Introducing multiple linear regression
Summary
5
Data Mining with Cluster Analysis
Data Mining with Cluster Analysis
Explaining clustering analysis
Partitioning using k-means clustering
Clustering using hierarchical techniques
Summary
6
Time Series Analysis
Time Series Analysis
Analyzing time series data with linear regression
Introducing key elements of time series analysis
Building ARIMA time series models
Summary
7
Visualizing the Datas Story
Visualizing the Datas Story
Visualizing data
Plotting with ggplot2
Geo-mapping using Leaflet
Creating interactive graphics using rCharts
Summary
8
Web Dashboards with Shiny
Web Dashboards with Shiny
Creating a basic Shiny app
Creating a marketing-campaign Shiny app
Deploying your Shiny app
Summary
References
References
Other Helpful R Functions
Other Helpful R Functions
Chapter 1 - Extract, Transform, and Load
Chapter 2 - Data Cleaning
R Packages Used in the Book
R Packages Used in the Book
R Code for Supporting Market Segment Business Case Calculations
R Code for Supporting Market Segment Business Case Calculations

Adapting string variables to a standard

You are almost done with the basics of data cleaning. At this point in the process, you have summarized, fixed, and converted your input data. This means that it is time for you to accomplish the fourth SFCA step, adapting your data to a standard.

The term standard has many possible meanings. It may be that an R package will set a standard for you. In other cases, you may wish to establish one. For instance, notice in the previous data view that the sources variable is a character data type. You will see that it contains the advertising source where the customer learned about bike sharing. Leaving this as a character data type seems reasonable, but R cannot group character items to summarize them in analysis.

Your implied standard is that sources should be a categorical variable. What might happen if you use the as.factor(bike$sources) function? This will convert the data, but before you do that, you should consider a couple of questions:

  • How many unique...

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