Data Analytics for Absolute Beginners: a Deconstructed Guide to Data Literacy

Book excerpt: While exposure to data has become more or less a daily ritual for the rank-and-file knowledge worker, true understanding-treated in this book as data literacy-resides in knowing what lies behind the data. Everything from the data's source to the specific choice of input variables, algorithmic transformations, and visual representation shape the accuracy, relevance, and value of the data and mark its journey from raw data to business insight. It's also important to grasp the terminology and basic concepts of data analytics as much as it is to have the financial literacy to be successful as a decisionmaker in the business world. In this book, we make sense of data analytics without the assumption that you understand specific data science terminology or advanced programming languages to set you on your path. Topics covered in this book: Data Mining Big Data Machine Learning Alternative Data Data Management Web Scraping Regression Analysis Clustering Analysis Association Analysis Data Visualization Business Intelligence