Big Data: How Data Analytics Is Transforming the World

By: Tim Chartier, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Tim Chartier

Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins

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 The content is a bit outdated, but still could have been interesting if presented correctly.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!

Good and usefull information, disappointing graphics

The author presented a lot of interesting information and techniques for looking at large data sets using methods that were new to me. However, he frequently referred to details and patterns in plots of the data to illustrate certain key points. But the accompanying PDF file does not contain any of those charts. Consequently, his presentation is not as useful as it could have been. If the pdf file were updated to include the graphs and charts referred to then it would rate 5 stars.

poorly recorded

I have listened to a lot of the great course's materials, and this one was the hardest to get through. recording was choppy at times and the speaker stumbled on words more than I would have expected.

Good science-pop

Best for nonpro audience. Wide topics coverage. Good (but common) examples. Moderate complexity of calculations. Clear language.

Great tour through the analytics discipline

This was an excellent primer on analytics. With almost 20 years in data - databases, BI, analytics - I was hoping to use it as a refresher as work is pushing me back into core data science. Having this book did exactly that. In short, it is a good primer for any audience. Approachable for people new to the industry. Good overview for experienced folks who could use a review of the major topics in big data and analytics.

visual book..

good narrative and details, but this is a visual book where formulas and charts are part of the narrative making it hard to follow

Excellent introduction to an important field

The subject was covered well at a high level with good coverage of the key techniques of Data Analysis. Many of the examples were from sports which was OK but I would have preferred more business examples.

Good Material But Lacking References to PDF

Engaging author presenting good material. Unfortunately during some of the more complex scenarios, the narrator refers to diagrams which are hard to look at while driving, etc.

Audible and the Great Courses need to work on an app that will play the audio track and be able to show the referenced diagrams when the diagram is being discussed.

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.

Big Deal

Some math included. A little dry but important for how data can affect your life.

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.

Basic in the extreme.

This is a course for absolute beginners who have no prior knowledge of data or analytics. This needs to be better reflected on the title.

A very very long TED Talk

Lots of examples but very little practical guidance on how to actually do the analysis. Not helpful for anyone actually wanting to learn something.