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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Data analysis
This book presents an accessible introduction to data-driven storytelling. Resulting from unique discussions between data visualization researchers and data journalists, it offers an integrated definition of the topic, presents vivid examples and patterns for data storytelling, and calls out key challenges and new opportunities for researchers and practitioners.
This textbook provides future data analysts with the tools, methods, and skills needed to answer data-focused, real-life questions; to carry out data analysis; and to visualize and interpret results to support better decisions in business, economics, and public policy. Data wrangling and exploration, regression analysis, machine learning, and causal analysis are comprehensively covered, as well as when, why, and how the methods work, and how they relate to each other. As the most effective way to communicate data analysis, running case studies play a central role in this textbook. Each case starts with an industry-relevant question and answers it by using real-world data and applying the tools and methods covered in the textbook. Learning is then consolidated by 360 practice questions and 120 data exercises. Extensive online resources, including raw and cleaned data and codes for all analysis in Stata, R, and Python, can be found at www.gabors-data-analysis.com.
The massive volume of data generated in modern applications can overwhelm our ability to conveniently transmit, store, and index it. For many scenarios, building a compact summary of a dataset that is vastly smaller enables flexibility and efficiency in a range of queries over the data, in exchange for some approximation. This comprehensive introduction to data summarization, aimed at practitioners and students, showcases the algorithms, their behavior, and the mathematical underpinnings of their operation. The coverage starts with simple sums and approximate counts, building to more advanced probabilistic structures such as the Bloom Filter, distinct value summaries, sketches, and quantile summaries. Summaries are described for specific types of data, such as geometric data, graphs, and vectors and matrices. The authors offer detailed descriptions of and pseudocode for key algorithms that have been incorporated in systems from companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Twitter.
Learn the latest version of ArcGIS Pro with the newest edition of this bestselling series. Getting to Know ArcGIS Pro 2.8 introduces the tools and functions of ArcGIS Pro, the powerful desktop GIS application. Geographic information system (GIS) software is making a huge impact in businesses and organizations with mapping and analytic capabilities. Getting to Know ArcGIS Pro 2.8 uses practical project workflows to teach best practices to readers of all skill levels. Readers will explore data visualizations, build a geodatabase, discover 3D GIS, create maps for web and physical presentations, and more. With more than 300 full-color images, Getting to Know ArcGIS Pro 2.8 clarifies complicated processes such as developing a geoprocessing model, using Python to write a script tool, and creating space-time cubes for analysis. Throughout the book, short sidebars about real-world GIS scenarios in specific industries help readers understand how ArcGIS Pro can be applied widely to solve problems. At the end of each chapter, a summary and glossary help reinforce the skills learned. This edition has been completely updated for use with ArcGIS Pro 2.8. Other updates include new chapters on ArcGIS Online and geocoding. The Getting to Know series has been teaching readers about GIS for more than twenty years. Ideal for students, self-learners, and professionals who want to learn the premier GIS desktop application, Getting to Know ArcGIS Pro 2.8 is a textbook and desk reference designed to show users how they can use ArcGIS Pro successfully on their own.
A comprehensive introduction and teaching resource for state-of-the-art Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) using R software. This guide facilitates the efficient teaching, independent learning, and use of QCA with the best available software, reducing the time and effort required when encountering not just the logic of a new method, but also new software. With its applied and practical focus, the book offers a genuinely simple and intuitive resource for implementing the most complete protocol of QCA. To make the lives of students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners as easy as possible, the book includes learning goals, core points, empirical examples, and tips for good practices. The freely available online material provides a rich body of additional resources to aid users in their learning process. Beyond performing core analyses with the R package QCA, the book also facilitates a close integration with the R package SetMethods allowing for a host of additional protocols for building a more solid and well-rounded QCA.
As an emerging discipline, data science broadly means different things across different areas. Exploring the relationship of data science with statistics, a well-established and principled data-analytic discipline, this book provides insights about commonalities in approach, and differences in emphasis.Featuring chapters from established authors in both disciplines, the book also presents a number of applications and accompanying papers.
Recent advances in sabermetrics have made it possible to assess the exact contribution of each player to the success of failure of his team. Using the simple metric Wins Above Average-the number of wins that the 2016 Red Sox, for example, added to their total because they had Mookie Betters in right field instead of an average player (5)-David Kaiser leads us on a fascinating tour through the history of major league baseball from 1901 through 2016, analyzing all the greatest players and teams of the past and showing exactly why they enjoyed the success that they did. Along the way, he identifies the 15 or 20 greatest players of every generation, using simple metrics that allow him to compare the impact of players from Ty Cobb through Ted Williams to Willie Mays, Rickey Henderson and Barry Bonds, and pitchers from Christy Mathewson to Roger Clemens. The book also says a great deal about short- and long-term strategies for organizational success. Along the way, Kaiser takes on a good many tenets of diamond faith.. The importance of pitching, he argues, has been vastly exaggerated since the beginning of baseball time, and great pitching has almost never been the key to a dynasty. Many Hall of Fame pitchers and some hitters as well, he finds, have reached Cooperstown almost entirely on the backs of their teammates. Accurate metrics also reveal that a few over-qualified players are still awaiting selection to Cooperstown. Last but hardly least, Kaiser shows that baseball is threatened by an unprecedented shortage of great players, and challenges MLB to do something about it.
Written for anyone beginning a research project, this introductory book takes you through the process of analysing your data from start to finish. The author sets out an easy-to-use model for coding data in order to break it down into parts, and then to reassemble it to create a meaningful picture of the phenomenon under study. Full of useful advice, the book guides the reader through the last difficult integrating phase of qualitative analysis including diagramming, memoing, thinking aloud, and using one's feelings, and how to incorporate the use of software where appropriate. Ideal for third year undergraduate students, master students, postgraduates and anybody beginning a research project, the book includes examples covering a wide range of subjects - making the book useful for students across the social science disciplines. Hennie Boeije is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Methodology and Statistics of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
A guide to the principles and methods of data analysis that does not require knowledge of statistics or programming A General Introduction to Data Analytics is an essential guide to understand and use data analytics. This book is written using easy-to-understand terms and does not require familiarity with statistics or programming. The authors--noted experts in the field--highlight an explanation of the intuition behind the basic data analytics techniques. The text also contains exercises and illustrative examples. Thought to be easily accessible to non-experts, the book provides motivation to the necessity of analyzing data. It explains how to visualize and summarize data, and how to find natural groups and frequent patterns in a dataset. The book also explores predictive tasks, be them classification or regression. Finally, the book discusses popular data analytic applications, like mining the web, information retrieval, social network analysis, working with text, and recommender systems. The learning resources offer: A guide to the reasoning behind data mining techniques A unique illustrative example that extends throughout all the chapters Exercises at the end of each chapter and larger projects at the end of each of the text's two main parts Together with these learning resources, the book can be used in a 13-week course guide, one chapter per course topic. The book was written in a format that allows the understanding of the main data analytics concepts by non-mathematicians, non-statisticians and non-computer scientists interested in getting an introduction to data science. A General Introduction to Data Analytics is a basic guide to data analytics written in highly accessible terms.
Learn how to easily transform your data into engaging, interactive visual reports! Data is no longer the sole domain of tech professionals and scientists. Whether in our personal, business, or community lives, data is rapidly increasing in both importance and sheer volume. The ability to visualize all kinds of data is now within reach for anyone with a computer and an internet connection. Google Data Studio, quickly becoming the most popular free tool in data visualization, offers users a flexible, powerful way to transform private and public data into interactive knowledge that can be easily shared and understood. Hands On With Google Data Studio teaches you how to visualize your data today and produce professional quality results quickly and easily. No previous experience is required to get started right away--all you need is this guide, a Gmail account, and a little curiosity to access and visualize data just like large businesses and organizations. Clear, step-by-step instructions help you identify business trends, turn budget data into a report, assess how your websites or business listings are performing, analyze public data, and much more. Practical examples and expert tips are found throughout the text to help you fully understand and apply your new knowledge to a wide array of real-world scenarios. This engaging, reader-friendly guide will enable you to: Use Google Data Studio to access various types of data, from your own personal data to public sources Build your first data set, navigate the Data Studio interface, customize reports, and share your work Learn the fundamentals of data visualization, personal data accessibility, and open data API's Harness the power of publicly accessible data services including Google's recently released Data Set Search Add banners, logos, custom graphics, and color palettes Hands On With Google Data Studio: A Data Citizens Survival Guide is a must-have resource for anyone starting their data visualization journey, from individuals, consultants, and small business owners to large business and organization managers and leaders.
This study explores issues of biomass energy use in relation to household welfare and it assesses Ethiopia's future energy security with a focus on long-term model of the energy sector, and institutional arrangements required for decentralized energy initiatives. Data from Ethiopian rural households reveal negative welfare effects associated with traditional biomass energy utilization, while increases in the opportunity cost of fuelwood collection is associated negatively with allocation of labour to agriculture and fuelwood use. It appears that investment on integrated energy source diversification improves sustainability and resilience, but increases production cost. Innovations that improve alternative sources reduce production cost, improve energy security, and thus serve as an engine of economic growth.
Data science has never had more influence on the world. Large companies are now seeing the benefit of employing data scientists to interpret the vast amounts of data that now exists. However, the field is so new and is evolving so rapidly that the analysis produced can be haphazard at best. The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science shows us real-world examples of what can go wrong. Written to be an entertaining read, this invaluable guide investigates the all too common mistakes of data scientists - who can be plagued by lazy thinking, whims, hunches, and prejudices - and indicates how they have been at the root of many disasters, including the Great Recession. Gary Smith and Jay Cordes emphasise how scientific rigor and critical thinking skills are indispensable in this age of Big Data, as machines often find meaningless patterns that can lead to dangerous false conclusions. The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science is loaded with entertaining tales of both successful and misguided approaches to interpreting data, both grand successes and epic failures. These cautionary tales will not only help data scientists be more effective, but also help the public distinguish between good and bad data science.
New and expanded edition. An International Bestseller - Over One Million Copies Sold! Shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. Since Aristotle, we have fought to understand the causes behind everything. But this ideology is fading. In the age of big data, we can crunch an incomprehensible amount of information, providing us with invaluable insights about the what rather than the why. We're just starting to reap the benefits: tracking vital signs to foresee deadly infections, predicting building fires, anticipating the best moment to buy a plane ticket, seeing inflation in real time and monitoring social media in order to identify trends. But there is a dark side to big data. Will it be machines, rather than people, that make the decisions? How do you regulate an algorithm? What will happen to privacy? Will individuals be punished for acts they have yet to commit? In this groundbreaking and fascinating book, two of the world's most-respected data experts reveal the reality of a big data world and outline clear and actionable steps that will equip the reader with the tools needed for this next phase of human evolution.
Data Analysis in Molecular Biology and Evolution introduces biologists to DAMBE, a proprietary, user-friendly computer program for molecular data analysis. The unique combination of this book and software will allow biologists not only to understand the rationale behind a variety of computational tools in molecular biology and evolution, but also to gain instant access to these tools for use in their laboratories. Data Analysis in Molecular Biology and Evolution serves as an excellent resource for advanced level undergraduates or graduates as well as for professionals working in the field.
1.1 Overview V ARIOWIN 2.2 is a collection of four Windows (TM) programs - Prevar2D, Vari02D with PCF, Model, and Grid Display - that are used for spatial data analysis and variogram modeling of irregularly spaced data in two dimensions. Prevar2D builds a pair comparison file (PCF), that is, a binary file containing pairs of data sorted in terms of increasing distance. Pair comparison files can be built from subsets in order to reduce memory requirements. Vari02D with PCF is used for spatial data analysis of 2D data. It uses an ASCII data file and a binary pair comparison file produced by Prevar2D. Features implemented in Vari02D with PCF include: * the possibility to characterize the spatial continuity of one variable or the joined spatial continuity of two variables, * variogram surfaces for identifying directions of anisotropies, * directional variograms calculated along any direction, * several measures of spatial continuity. Not only the variogram but also the standardized variogram, the covariance, the correlogram, and the madogram are used to measure spatial continuity. * h-scatterplots to assess the meaning of these measures, * the identification and localization of pairs of data adversely affecting the measure of spatial continuity. Once identified, these pairs can be masked from the calculation interactively. * variogram clouds for identifying pairs of data values having the most influence on the measure of spatial continuity. Those pairs can also be located on the sample map.
This book has won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title award 2014. A century of education and education reform along with the last three decades of high-stakes testing and accountability reveals a disturbing paradox: Education has a steadfast commitment to testing and grading despite decades of research, theory, and philosophy that reveal the corrosive consequences of both testing and grading within an education system designed to support human agency and democratic principles. This edited volume brings together a collection of essays that confronts the failure of testing and grading and then offers practical and detailed examinations of implementing at the macro and micro levels of education teaching and learning free of the weight of testing and grading. The book explores the historical failure of testing and grading; the theoretical and philosophical arguments against testing and grading; the negative influence of testing and grading on social justice, race, class, and gender; and the role of testing and grading in perpetuating a deficit perspective of children, learning, race, and class. The chapters fall under two broad sections: Part I: "Degrading Learning, Detesting Education: The Failure of High-Stake Accountability in Education" includes essays on the historical, theoretical, and philosophical arguments against testing and grading; Part II: "De-Grading and De-Testing in a Time of High-Stakes Education Reform" presents practical experiments in de-testing and de-grading classrooms for authentic learning experiences.
This book showcases the different ways in which contemporary forms of data analysis are being used in urban planning and management. It highlights the emerging possibilities that city-regional governance, technology and data have for better planning and urban management - and discusses how you can apply them to your research. Including perspectives from across the globe, it's packed with examples of good practice and helps to demystify the process of using big and open data. Learn about different kinds of emergent data sources and how they are processed, visualised and presented. Understand how spatial analysis and GIS are used in city planning. See examples of how contemporary data analytics methods are being applied in a variety of contexts, such as 'smart' city management and megacities. Aimed at upper undergraduate and postgraduate students studying spatial analysis and planning, this timely text is the perfect companion to enable you to apply data analytics approaches in your research.
Recent years have seen a sharp increase in the application of sophisticated statistical modelling methods to sample survey data. Analysis of Survey Data aims to provide a solid basis for the statistical theory underpinning these applications. This book brings together two key statistical traditions, statistical modelling - such as regression analysis - and sample survey methods, as used for sample design and estimation.
"Data Analysis and Visualization in Genomics and Proteomics" is the
first book addressing integrative data analysis and visualization
in this field. It addresses important techniques for the
interpretation of data originating from multiple sources, encoded
in different formats or protocols, and processed by multiple
systems. One of the first systematic overviews of the problem of
biological data integration using computational approachesThis book
provides scientists and students with the basis for the development
and application of integrative computational methods to analyse
biological data on a systemic scalePlaces emphasis on the
processing of multiple data and knowledge resources, and the
combination of different models and systems
The approximation and the estimation of nonparametric functions by projections on an orthonormal basis of functions are useful in data analysis. This book presents series estimators defined by projections on bases of functions, they extend the estimators of densities to mixture models, deconvolution and inverse problems, to semi-parametric and nonparametric models for regressions, hazard functions and diffusions. They are estimated in the Hilbert spaces with respect to the distribution function of the regressors and their optimal rates of convergence are proved. Their mean square errors depend on the size of the basis which is consistently estimated by cross-validation. Wavelets estimators are defined and studied in the same models.The choice of the basis, with suitable parametrizations, and their estimation improve the existing methods and leads to applications to a wide class of models. The rates of convergence of the series estimators are the best among all nonparametric estimators with a great improvement in multidimensional models. Original methods are developed for the estimation in deconvolution and inverse problems. The asymptotic properties of test statistics based on the estimators are also established.
This richly illustrated book describes the use of interactive and dynamic graphics as part of multidimensional data analysis. Chapter topics include clustering, supervised classification, and working with missing values. A variety of plots and interaction methods are used in each analysis, often starting with brushing linked low-dimensional views and working up to manual manipulation of tours of several variables. The book is augmented by a wealth of online material.
This book occupies a unique position in the field of statistical analysis in the behavioural and social sciences in that it targets learners who would benefit from learning more conceptually and less computationally about statistical procedures and the software packages that can be used to implement them. This book provides a comprehensive overview of this important research skill domain with an emphasis on visual support for learning and better understanding. The primary focus is on fundamental concepts, procedures and interpretations of statistical analyses within a single broad illustrative research context. The book covers a wide range of descriptive, correlational and inferential statistical procedures as well as more advanced procedures not typically covered in introductory and intermediate statistical texts. It is an ideal reference for postgraduate students as well as for researchers seeking to broaden their conceptual exposure to what is possible in statistical analysis.
Distribution-free resampling methods-permutation tests, decision trees, and the bootstrap-are used today in virtually every research area. A Practitioner's Guide to Resampling for Data Analysis, Data Mining, and Modeling explains how to use the bootstrap to estimate the precision of sample-based estimates and to determine sample size, data permutations to test hypotheses, and the readily-interpreted decision tree to replace arcane regression methods. Highlights Each chapter contains dozens of thought provoking questions, along with applicable R and Stata code Methods are illustrated with examples from agriculture, audits, bird migration, clinical trials, epidemiology, image processing, immunology, medicine, microarrays and gene selection Lists of commercially available software for the bootstrap, decision trees, and permutation tests are incorporated in the text Access to APL, MATLAB, and SC code for many of the routines is provided on the author's website The text covers estimation, two-sample and k-sample univariate, and multivariate comparisons of means and variances, sample size determination, categorical data, multiple hypotheses, and model building Statistics practitioners will find the methods described in the text easy to learn and to apply in a broad range of subject areas from A for Accounting, Agriculture, Anthropology, Aquatic science, Archaeology, Astronomy, and Atmospheric science to V for Virology and Vocational Guidance, and Z for Zoology. Practitioners and research workers and in the biomedical, engineering and social sciences, as well as advanced students in biology, business, dentistry, medicine, psychology, public health, sociology, and statistics will find an easily-grasped guide to estimation, testing hypotheses and model building.
Optimization techniques are at the core of data science, including data analysis and machine learning. An understanding of basic optimization techniques and their fundamental properties provides important grounding for students, researchers, and practitioners in these areas. This text covers the fundamentals of optimization algorithms in a compact, self-contained way, focusing on the techniques most relevant to data science. An introductory chapter demonstrates that many standard problems in data science can be formulated as optimization problems. Next, many fundamental methods in optimization are described and analyzed, including: gradient and accelerated gradient methods for unconstrained optimization of smooth (especially convex) functions; the stochastic gradient method, a workhorse algorithm in machine learning; the coordinate descent approach; several key algorithms for constrained optimization problems; algorithms for minimizing nonsmooth functions arising in data science; foundations of the analysis of nonsmooth functions and optimization duality; and the back-propagation approach, relevant to neural networks.
What happens to risk as the economic horizon goes to zero and risk is seen as an exposure to a change in state that may occur instantaneously at any time? All activities that have been undertaken statically at a fixed finite horizon can now be reconsidered dynamically at a zero time horizon, with arrival rates at the core of the modeling. This book, aimed at practitioners and researchers in financial risk, delivers the theoretical framework and various applications of the newly established dynamic conic finance theory. The result is a nonlinear non-Gaussian valuation framework for risk management in finance. Risk-free assets disappear and low risk portfolios must pay for their risk reduction with negative expected returns. Hedges may be constructed to enhance value by exploiting risk interactions. Dynamic trading mechanisms are synthesized by machine learning algorithms. Optimal exposures are designed for option positioning simultaneously across all strikes and maturities. |
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