Analytics in a Big Data World: The Essential Guide to Data Science and its Applications (Wiley and SAS Business Series) 1st Edition

"Analytics in a Big Data World" provides a perfect introduction into the foundations and potential of analytics. It starts by introducing the basic nomenclature, the analytics process model, and its relation to other relevant disciplines, such as e.g. statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Chapter 2 highlights the most important steps of the process model, such as sampling, treatment of missing values, and variable selection, among others. The subsequent two chapters focus on state-of-the-art techniques on predictive and descriptive analytics, respectively. A broad range of real-world applications underlines the relevance of "Analytics in a Big Data World" putting special emphasis on credit risk, survival analysis, and social network analysis. Particularly interesting is Chapter 7 where the author provides tools and hints on how to put analytics to work. Topics covered here range from backtesting and benchmarking approaches to data quality issues, software tools, and model documentation practices. Up-to-date references provide sources to further study each one of the topics treated.This book fills the gap between rigorous scientific literature on the one hand and high-level descriptions of particular applications on the other by providing the right level of detail regarding quantitative methods in order to understand analytics and its potential for a broad range of business applications. It is full of sound mathematical tools that have proved their usefulness in many real-world applications, but always explained from a business-oriented perspective. The way how even complex phenomena are presented in simple and easily understandable terms is particularly interesting and adds a lot of value.Bart Baesens, a world-renowned expert in analytics, shares with the readers of this book his knowledge and experience from many projects and training courses performed worldwide and in several different industries as well as from his role as leading researcher in analytics and data science.I highly recommend this book for newcomers to the area as a source for a solid introduction, for students and teachers of undergraduate courses or executive education, and last but not least for professionals working in industry or consulting related to business analytics.

Dr. Bart Baesens does an excellent job of setting up the business case for using analytics in the Big Data world in this book. He goes over all of the needed general functions for analytics and has great use cases as well. Only things I might see which could have been added are how to visualize and/or envision the results of the Big Data analytics and also the case of when data gets so large, that often statistical regressions don't give accurate tests of significance just due to the sheer volume of data records going into a regression model and how these should or could be adjusted accordingly. Otherwise, this is a great resource for any organization who has data larger than they can currently deal with and gives great insights.

Surely, Big Data is a hot topic. As a researcher and a professor of data mining and business analytics, I have read dozens of books related to big data. Most of them discussed big data topics and issues from a more general perspective, e.g., the strategic value-adding, managerial implications, etc., and are lack of practical and technical guidance. Bart Baesen's book is the first book I read that provides a structural and technical instructions on how to conduct big data analytics in real world business management.Besides, this book has constructed a systematic framework for conducting a successful big data analytics, for example, not only the key approaches, e.g., predictive analytics, descritive analytics, survivial analysis, social network analytics, are introduced, but the terminolgies (Chapter 1), data preprocessing (Chapter 2) and life cycle for conducting a big data analytics (Chapter 7) are also clearly illustrated, along with some best applications (Chapter 8). This is a well-structured book, which perfectly fits business data analysts and consultants, graduate students in business analytics, etc.Another feature is that the book is business management oriented. Though many technical details of data processing are introduced, this book focuses on how to solve real world business issues with the introduced techniques. Thereafter, this book excellently links big data techniques and real world business management.Finally, the examples applications in Chapter 8 are very helpful, especially to the readers who have basic knowledge in data mining and business intelligence.

First, I must admit that I have known Professor Baesens over the years and he is a good friend, But that's not the reason why I love this book. There are many books available today on this topic but this one is readable, understandable and yet provide enough details so readers can understand the basic mechanics of many statistical and machine learning algorithms that are described in the book. Professor Basens has a unique way to succinctly describe advanced analytics applications that make the readers understand the breadth of possibilities that exist with regards to big data and and advanced analytics in any industry today. I recommend this book as a must have for all MBA students who are in my advanced analytics classes at Oklahoma State University and they too have told me that they loved the book. so if you are a student who is undertaking a journey into learning advanced analytics, or a professor who is teaching a course or a professional who simply wants to understand all the buzz about big data and advanced analytics, I strongly recommend this book.Dr. Goutam Chakraborty, Professor(Marketing) and Director of Graduate Certificate Program Business Data Mining, Director of Graduate Certificate Program Marketing Analytics, Oklahoma State University (analytics.okstate.edu)