Applied Predictive Modeling covers the overall predictive modeling process, beginning with the crucial steps of data preprocessing, data splitting and foundations of model tuning. The text then provides intuitive explanations of numerous common and modern regression and classification techniques, always with an emphasis on illustrating and solving real data problems. The text illustrates all parts of the modeling process through many hands-on, real-life examples, and every chapter contains extensive R code for each step of the process. This multi-purpose text can be used as an introduction to predictive models and the overall modeling process, a practitioner's reference handbook, or as a text for advanced undergraduate or graduate level predictive modeling courses. To that end, each chapter contains problem sets to help solidify the covered concepts and uses data available in the book's R package. This text is intended for a broad audience as both an introduction to predictive models as well as a guide to applying them. Non-mathematical readers will appreciate the intuitive explanations of the techniques while an emphasis on problem-solving with real data across a wide variety of applications will aid practitioners who wish to extend their expertise. Readers should have knowledge of basic statistical ideas, such as correlation and linear regression analysis. While the text is biased against complex equations, a mathematical background is needed for advanced topics.

A practical guide to obtaining, transforming, exploring, and analyzing data using Python, MongoDB, and Apache Spark About This Book * Learn to use various data analysis tools and algorithms to classify, cluster, visualize, simulate, and forecast your data * Apply Machine Learning algorithms to different kinds of data such as social networks, time series, and images * A hands-on guide to understanding the nature of data and how to turn it into insight Who This Book Is For This book is for developers who want to implement data analysis and data-driven algorithms in a practical way. It is also suitable for those without a background in data analysis or data processing. Basic knowledge of Python programming, statistics, and linear algebra is assumed. What You Will Learn * Acquire, format, and visualize your data * Build an image-similarity search engine * Generate meaningful visualizations anyone can understand * Get started with analyzing social network graphs * Find out how to implement sentiment text analysis * Install data analysis tools such as Pandas, MongoDB, and Apache Spark * Get to grips with Apache Spark * Implement machine learning algorithms such as classification or forecasting In Detail Beyond buzzwords like Big Data or Data Science, there are a great opportunities to innovate in many businesses using data analysis to get data-driven products. Data analysis involves asking many questions about data in order to discover insights and generate value for a product or a service. This book explains the basic data algorithms without the theoretical jargon, and you'll get hands-on turning data into insights using machine learning techniques. We will perform data-driven innovation processing for several types of data such as text, Images, social network graphs, documents, and time series, showing you how to implement large data processing with MongoDB and Apache Spark. Style and approach This is a hands-on guide to data analysis and data processing. The concrete examples are explained with simple code and accessible data.

Implement machine learning, time-series analysis, algorithmic trading and more About This Book * Understand the basics of R and how they can be applied in various Quantitative Finance scenarios * Learn various algorithmic trading techniques and ways to optimize them using the tools available in R. * Contain different methods to manage risk and explore trading using Machine Learning. Who This Book Is For If you want to learn how to use R to build quantitative finance models with ease, this book is for you. Analysts who want to learn R to solve their quantitative finance problems will also find this book useful. Some understanding of the basic financial concepts will be useful, though prior knowledge of R is not required. What You Will Learn * Get to know the basics of R and how to use it in the field of Quantitative Finance * Understand data processing and model building using R * Explore different types of analytical techniques such as statistical analysis, time-series analysis, predictive modeling, and econometric analysis * Build and analyze quantitative finance models using real-world examples * How real-life examples should be used to develop strategies * Performance metrics to look into before deciding upon any model * Deep dive into the vast world of machine-learning based trading * Get to grips with algorithmic trading and different ways of optimizing it * Learn about controlling risk parameters of financial instruments In Detail The role of a quantitative analyst is very challenging, yet lucrative, so there is a lot of competition for the role in top-tier organizations and investment banks. This book is your go-to resource if you want to equip yourself with the skills required to tackle any real-world problem in quantitative finance using the popular R programming language. You'll start by getting an understanding of the basics of R and its relevance in the field of quantitative finance. Once you've built this foundation, we'll dive into the practicalities of building financial models in R. This will help you have a fair understanding of the topics as well as their implementation, as the authors have presented some use cases along with examples that are easy to understand and correlate. We'll also look at risk management and optimization techniques for algorithmic trading. Finally, the book will explain some advanced concepts, such as trading using machine learning, optimizations, exotic options, and hedging. By the end of this book, you will have a firm grasp of the techniques required to implement basic quantitative finance models in R. Style and approach This book introduces you to the essentials of quantitative finance with the help of easy-to-understand, practical examples and use cases in R. Each chapter presents a specific financial concept in detail, backed with relevant theory and the implementation of a real-life example.