Books
Below is a list of books that I have read (not all of them completely) and can recommend.
Competing on Analytics
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The story of this book began in January 2006 with an article “Competing on Analytics” in Harward Business Review. Davenport states that “Many previous bases for competition … have been eroded by globalization. Proprietary technologies are rapidly copied, and breakthrough innovations in products or services are increasingly difficult to achieve”. And Davenport concludes that companies will compete on “smart decision making” based on how they manage information |
about their customers. E.g. how well they acquire and keep profitable customers leaving unprofitable ones to competitors.
The article became very popular and SAS and Intel proposed Davenport to continue his research. Davenport investigated the most successful companies relying on analytics: Google, Amazon, Capital One, Netflix, The New England Patriots football team etc. and derived basic principles of competing on analytics.
At present the article and the book are cited not only by sponsors — SAS and Intel, but by Oracle and other SAS competitors.
Data Mining Techniques
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At the University we studied math methods deeply starting from hypothesis formulation to the proofs of theorems. I call this approach “to shuffle formulas around the board”. We studied different methods from probability theory to the queueing theory. But after the graduation I started working and realized that most of the methods I learned are not applicable in business. People feel the same disappointment when they learn how to use Data Mining software. Documentation as |
a rule describes a lot of methods but it is not obvious how to apply them in business. The authors of the Data Mining techniques follow the other way. They described the most popular tasks in telecom, banking, and retail and described how to solve them. The book gives general overview of the Data Mining in business without going deep into math.
Programming
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Statistics
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and also
- Categorical Data Analysis Using Logistic Regression Course Notes
- Applied Analytics Using SAS Enterprise Miner 5.3 Course Notes
Where to buy?
The books are available on Amazon.com and SAS.com. For some reason Amazon.com has a better deal, for example lets compare prices on “The little SAS Book”: