Big Data: How Data Analytics Is Transforming the World

Publisher's Summary

In our age of accelerating progress in so many fields, it’s easy to lose sight of the underlying innovation that makes the data analytics revolution possible. These 24 lectures introduce you to the key concepts, methods, and accomplishments of this versatile approach to problem solving. You need no expertise in mathematics to follow this exciting story.

Tim Chartier, professor of mathematics and computer science, explains the basic computational techniques used in data analytics, but his focus is on how these ideas are applied and the amazing results they achieve. His case histories make these lectures both accessible and entertaining. He takes you behind the scenes to review many examples of data analysis in action, including the pitfalls and potential of Internet traffic analysis, algorithms that aim to predict what customers want, some of the best defenses for keeping your personal data private, how methods for filling out March Madness game brackets can be applied to other problems, and much more.

Professor Chartier is a champion of the fun, challenge, and breathtaking power of mathematics - qualities that are accessible with data analytics. And with his enjoyable lectures, you’ll discover concepts and tools that are transforming the world - and that you can use to transform your own life. It’s like watching a thrilling spectator sport that invites you to suit up and join the action!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 The Great Courses (P)2014 The Teaching Company, LLC

Huge disappointment as "audio book"

I have listened dozens of lectures from The Great Courses, and truly enjoyed most of them. I was hoping for a similar interesting and educating experience from this book, especially as this subject relates to my work. Unfortunately the experience was far from the high quality I was expecting. The content is a bit outdated, but still could have been interesting if presented correctly. The MOST ANNOYING aspect was that the speaker refers to visualizations, tables and other examples throughout the course, which are not even included in the accompanying PDF! The course is probably just audio from a video lecture, a waste of time in this format!

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Fun course

The lecturer stumbles on his words a bit, but I truly believe it's due to his enthusiasm. Very fun course. Probably better in video.

2 of 4 people found this review helpful

A good basic introduction... so much sports tho!

This is a pretty basic introduction to modern data analytics. It gives a bit of high-level insight into ideas such as regression, clustering, neural networks and other techniques as well as some very sensible advice on cross-validation, data cleaning and other important topics of great practical importance.

The lecturer gives an infectiously enthusiastic presentation and the overall effect is enjoyable and inspiring. I would definitely say it's worth listening to if you are a beginner to data analysis or want to get some idea what it's all about from outside.

As someone with a great deal of experience in the field I was disappointed though, as I was hoping it would contain more interesting and motivating examples of successful applications of these techniques to generate new knowledge and insight (i.e. a survey of results rather than methods). However a good 2/3 of the examples given are about sports. This is of little interest to me in general and even less so given that they are all *American* sports.

There are so many other domains in which these methods are giving examples it would really have been great to have covered much wider territory. Using only examples from recreational domains such as sports or content recommendations risks trivialising this very important topic.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful