Who would have thought that an entire book devoted to the bias-variance tradeoff would make it to the NY Times business best seller list? The book is the recently-published Noise, by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein, and, as of the beginning of August, it was #2 on the list. Kahneman, who wroteContinue reading “Book Review – Noise”
Category Archives: Book Reviews
Book Review: Mining Your Own Business by Gerhard Pilcher and Jeff Deal
This is a short book, Mining Your Own Business: A Primer for Executives on Understanding and Employing Data Mining and Predictive Analytics” befitting its intended audience – managers and executives with responsibility for data science and analytics projects. It outlines the requirements for success – not technical model success, but rather successful implementation in a way that buildsContinue reading “Book Review: Mining Your Own Business by Gerhard Pilcher and Jeff Deal”
Simulating the Complex Sale
Every 30 minutes a new business book is published; many of them purport to teach effective selling. Most of them make sense, but solid quantitative analysis is rarely on the front burner. This is strange, because effective selling requires demonstrating value. Sales professionals are taught to show components of value such as cost savings orContinue reading “Simulating the Complex Sale”
Book Review: Big Data in Practice by Bernard Marr
This short book is essentially an enriched list of 45 examples of how companies have used big data analytics. Marr sticks to high level generalities, and the book is in the spirit of light business journalism rather than detailed expositions that walk you through a successful big data implementation in detail. However, private companies, andContinue reading “Book Review: Big Data in Practice by Bernard Marr “
Book Review: Bandit Algorithms for Website Optimization, by John Myles White
Bandit Algorithms for Website Optimization, by John Myles White A classic statistical experimental design comparing treatments (two treatments, treatment versus control, multiple treatments) specifies a sample size, collection of data, then a decision, typically based on hypothesis-testing: the winning treatment must attain a level of statistical significance, otherwise you go with the default “null hypothesis.”Continue reading “Book Review: Bandit Algorithms for Website Optimization, by John Myles White”
Book Review: Everyone Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We REALLY Are
This week’s book review is of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz’s fascinating book about how social media data reveals all sorts of things about us that we barely know ourselves. For example, did you know that the ages 8-12 areContinue reading “Book Review: Everyone Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We REALLY Are”
Book Review: Weapons of Math Destruction
Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction, when it was first published in 2016, sounded an early alarm about the big data algorithms and their potential for social evil. The cover is adorned with a robotic death’s head and the subtitle reads “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.” O’Neil’s book begins with stories thatContinue reading “Book Review: Weapons of Math Destruction”
Book Review: Active-Epi
ActivEpi Web, by David Kleinbaum, is the text used in two Statistics.com courses (Epidemiology Statistics and Designing Valid Studies), but it is really a rich multimedia web-based presentation of epidemiological statistics, serving the role of a unique textbook format for an introductory course in the subject. It is historically noteworthy – it dates back toContinue reading “Book Review: Active-Epi”