Books
Now Kaiser Fung, whose books I have plugged before on this site, has a new book: Numbersense
Numbersense gives you a better idea of how Big Data interpretation works–and how it too often doesn’t work. The book enables the reader to take advantage of Big Data by first becoming a smarter consumer of numeric information, with:
– a better understanding of how numbers are analyzed
– a healthy skepticism for reported statistics
– questions you can ask about a numeric assertion to get at an analysts’ underlying assumptions (which you may disagree with)
– an understanding of how numbers can be manipulated or badly analyzed to support misleading or incorrect conclusions
Again, this is no statisticians-only book of hieroglyphics. This book aims to help you develop more sense for numbers.
Buy one now!
And if you have not read Kaiser’s first book, Numbers Rule Your World, well then you should:
Edward Tufte is an inspiration to me, and this is the book that made me a fan:
You should also read MIT/Babson guru Thomas Davenport on how your firm can turn analytics into a sustainable competitive advantage:
And no collection of books about analytics in the web age should exclude Avinash Kaushik. In Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, his humorous and entertaining style makes understanding web stats, well… fun: