Top 10 Data Analytics Books

Data Analytics Made Accessible

By Anil Maheshwari

"This book fills the need for a concise and conversational book on the hot and growing field of Data Science. Easy to read and informative, this lucid and constantly updated book covers everything important, with concrete examples, and invites the reader to join this field. University of Texas calls it #1 read for Data Analysts.
The chapters in the book are organized for a typical one-semester course. The book contains case-lets from real-world stories at the beginning of every chapter. There is also a running case study across the chapters as exercises. This book is designed to provide a student with the intuition behind this evolving area, along with a solid toolset of the major data mining techniques and platforms. Finally, it includes a tutorial for R. The 2019 edition contained expanded primers on Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Data Science careers, and a full tutorial on Python. The 2020 edition contains a new chapter on Data Ownership and Privacy, as these issues have become increasingly important."

Too Big to Ignore: The Business Case for Big Data

By Phil Simon

"Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior."

Data Strategy: How to Profit from a World of Big Data Analytics and The Internet of Things

By Bernard Marr

"Less than 0.5 per cent of all data is currently analyzed and used. However, business leaders and managers cannot afford to be unconcerned or sceptical about data. Data is revolutionizing the way we work and it is the companies that view data as a strategic asset that will survive and thrive. Data Strategy is a must-have guide to creating a robust data strategy. Explaining how to identify your strategic data needs, what methods to use to collect the data and, most importantly, how to translate your data into organizational insights for improved business decision-making and performance, this is essential reading for anyone aiming to leverage the value of their business data and gain competitive advantage.

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

By Eric Siegel

"An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating — surprisingly accessible — introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics (aka machine learning) works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a “how to” for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

Prediction is booming. It reinvents industries and runs the world. Companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities are seizing upon the power. These institutions predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die."

The Accidental Analyst: Show Your Data Who's Boss

By Eileen McDaniel & Stephen McDaniel

"Read this book for inspiration, ideas and confidence to begin tackling the problems you face at work. Keep it by your desk as a reference on how to organize, analyze and display your data using best practices of visual analytics. Don't worry, you can continue to use your favorite spreadsheet or data analysis software—this information is not tied to any particular application. Throughout the book, we also include tips, tricks, and shortcuts that took years of analyzing data to discover and understand!

This book is valuable for users of Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access, Business Objects, Cognos, JMP, Microstrategy, Panopticon Software, QlikView, R, SAS, SPSS, Tableau Software or Tibco Spotfire."

Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

By Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz

"Lean Analytics can help. By measuring and analyzing as you grow, you can validate whether a problem is real, find the right customers, and decide what to build, how to monetize it, and how to spread the word. Focusing on the One Metric That Matters to your business right now gives you the focus you need to move ahead--and the discipline to know when to change course.

Written by Alistair Croll (Coradiant, CloudOps, Startupfest) and Ben Yoskovitz (Year One Labs, GoInstant), the book lays out practical, proven steps to take your startup from initial idea to product/market fit and beyond. Packed with over 30 case studies, and based on a year of interviews with over a hundred founders and investors, the book is an invaluable, practical guide for Lean Startup practitioners everywhere."

Data Analytics: Become A Master In Data Analytics

By Richard Dorsey

"Analyzing data is not easy, due to the fact that you have to figure out which type of data analytics you are going to use, as well as defeat the challenges that you will come up against when it comes to analyzing data.

With this book, it is our goal to show you the easiest way to work with data analytics and how you are going to avoid some of the challenges and risks that you will be putting yourself up against when you are working with data.

You will realize that analyzing data is not the easiest thing in the world. However, it is going to get easier the more that you practice. Just guarantee that you are taking the time to practice and do not put too much pressure on yourself."

Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

By Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

"Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You'll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story. The lessons in this illuminative text are grounded in theory, but made accessible through numerous real-world examples—ready for immediate application to your next graph or presentation.

Storytelling is not an inherent skill, especially when it comes to data visualization, and the tools at our disposal don't make it any easier. This book demonstrates how to go beyond conventional tools to reach the root of your data, and how to use your data to create an engaging, informative, compelling story."

Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know about Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking

By Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett

"Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.

Based on an MBA course Provost has taught at New York University over the past ten years, Data Science for Business provides examples of real-world business problems to illustrate these principles. You’ll not only learn how to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists, but also how participate intelligently in your company’s data science projects. You’ll also discover how to think data-analytically, and fully appreciate how data science methods can support business decision-making."

Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis

By Stephen Few

"Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis teaches simple, practical means to explore and analyze quantitative data--techniques that rely primarily on using your eyes. This book features graphical techniques that can be applied to a broad range of software tools, including Microsoft Excel, because so many people have nothing else, but also more powerful visual analysis tools that can dramatically extend your analytical reach. You'll learn to make sense of quantitative data by discerning the meaningful patterns, trends, relationships, and exceptions that measure your organization's performance, identify potential problems and opportunities, and reveal what will likely happen in the future. Now You See It is not just for those with "analyst" in their titles, but for everyone who's interested in discovering the stories in their data that reveal their organization's performance and how it can be improved."