Analytics in a Big Data World: The Essential Guide to Data Science and its Applications (Wiley and SAS Business Series) Hardcover – 9 May 2014

Many people have heard the word or even have collected some "Big Data" in the last few years but possibly not many of them know how to use these "Big Data". This book provides a perfect answer by presenting some analytical applications that could be used by practitioners in various industries.I am teaching analytics to university students from various levels of quantitative background. I have been using this book as a key learning text for several of my courses. For advance analytic students, this book not only provides a collection of practical examples to show how analytics could be used by organisations in a wide range of sectors but also includes some popular analytic topics (e.g. social network analytics, survival analysis, etc.). Many analytic students (or even practitioners!) have overlooked the importance of the challenges in putting analytics in practice. A chapter of this book contributes to this important issue. This is an excellent book with good balance of theoretical and practical topics.For those who are less keen on numerical subjects, this book also provides a great reference because the author uses some simple approaches to present the mathematics and statistics behind these analytical applications. If you are struggling with equations or mathematical symbols but you are interested to understand more about analytics, this book is a must buy for you!It is an easy-to-read and full of practical case studies book, which provides a great foundation for anyone, who would like to make good use of "Big Data"!

I can recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about using big data for business applications. What I loved about it is that it provides a general overview allowing you to frame all you know already or that you heard before on the topic, and at the same time it provides insight in an intuitive manner in the technical workings of a number of fundamental techniques in the field – about which you also heard a lot already, but you never really bothered to look into how these techniques really function basically. The book is not too academic in nature, something you often have, and is clearly written by someone who knows how things go in a company and what’s important to the business. The book is written fluently, provides insightful examples – in summary: very pleasant to read!

The work created here is a real overview that can be read on an introductory level or used as a reference for more experienced professionals. It is not only applicable on Big Data but also gives a clear idea about mathematical modelling. The link with the real world in the examples clarifies even the most complex theories in the book.

When I recieved the copy of this book by Professor Bart Baesens, I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I was absorbed in reading the book. So thank you for introducing me to this book.The best thing about this book is it doesn't sell itself because of the word "big data", instead it talks about what constitutes this very hyped up phrase. It talks about Analytics, about various forms of it, various applications and presents delightfully interesting insights. For me as an industry practitioner of analytics, I found this book set at a perfect pace to not only pick up interesting information as I read it, but also to try and implement some techniques described in the book on my own and come back to check how my results compared against the case study.I would definitely recommend this book to students who are interested in exploring analytics, to data scientists looking to increase their knowledge in different types of industry applications and to anybody who feels they are analytically inclined!

I am very interested in data analytics and its application to business issues. However, this book was just too technical and didn't include enough practical examples. There are better books on this subject matter.

One of the most confusing books on big data I've ever read. It is not a comprehensive book, yet it does a good job making the most basic concepts difficult to understand. I definitely do not recommend it to beginners interested in data science, for the may be the reason you will decide to never dig any deeper.