Mining Your Own Business: A Primer for Executives on Understanding and Employing Data Mining and Predictive Analytics - Softcover

Deal, Jeff; Pilcher, Gerhard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996712100 ISBN 13: 9780996712101

Publisher: Data Science Publishing, 2016

Synopsis

In this practical guide for organizational leaders and top-level executives, industry experts Jeff Deal and Gerhard Pilcher explain in clear, understandable English...

• What data mining and predictive analytics are,


• Why they are such powerful management tools,


• How and when to use them for greatest positive impact across a broad spectrum of industries.

Complete with solid advice and instructive case histories, it demonstrates how to harness the power of data mining and predictive analytics, while avoiding costly mistakes. Use it to gain a quick overview of the subject and as a handy resource to be referred to again and again.
If you re preparing to lead or participate in a data analytics initiative, this is the one book you must read!
Receiving early, strong praise from business government leaders who are using these powerful management tools to achieve dramatic goals for projects and their organizations.

CONTENTS

Introduction and Overview

1.Empowering the Decision Makers

Hunting for Needles in Haystacks

Breaking the Mind Barrier

A World of Applications

2.Clearing Up the Confusion

Ten Levels of Analytics

Four Categories of Modeling Knowledge

Supervised vs. Unsupervised Learning

Levels and Advanced Data Types

The Analytic Organization

3.Leading a Data Analytics Initiative

Starting Small

Examples of Poor vs. Good Focus

Cultivating the Culture

Managing a Data Analytics Initiative

The Experiences of a Mobile Phone Service Provider

Leadership is Key

A Parade of Champions at a Federal Agency

A Lack of Leadership at a Financial Firm

The Effect of Different Leadership Styles at a

Government Agency

Bold Leadership Required

4.Staffing a Data Analytics Project

Individual or Team?

Assembling the Team

What is a Data Scientist?

More than Academic Credentials

The Most Important Quality

Mike Thurber s Story

Building Teams through Gap Analysis

5.Acquiring the Right Tools

A Variety of Techniques and Disciplines

Interface Level of Tools

Sources of Tools

A Word about Open-Source Tools Tool Trends

6.Hiring Data Analytics Consultants

Discerning Fact from Hype

Evaluating Industry Experience

Evaluating Analytics Experience

Finding the Right Consultant

The Modeling Process

7.Understanding the Data Mining Process

The CRISP-DM Process

Resist the Temptation to Take Shortcuts

8.Understanding the Business

Clarifying Your Objective

Defining the Terminology

Framing the Questions

An Unexpected Finding

9.Understanding and Preparing the Data

Understanding the Data

Cleaning the Data

Perfect Data

Collecting and Preparing the Data

Fostering Cooperation

Governing the Data

10.Building the Model

Inside the Black Box

Building an Illustrative Model

Non-Linear Models

Choosing a Model

Response Surfaces of Predictive Models

The Trade-off between Accuracy and Interpretability

Choosing and Testing Modeling Algorithms

Dealing with Variance

Model Ensembles

11.Validating the Model

Technical Validation

Checking for Mistakes

Checking for Generalization

Using Experts to Qualify Model Results

Target Shuffling

Business Validation

Putting the Model into Practice

12.Deploying the Model

Planning & Budgeting for Deployment

Business Processes Are Key

Example: FindingTaxpayer Fraud

Four Important Questions

13.Realizing the TransfoTransformation

Realizing the Potential

The Tipping Point

Appendix

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Deal is Vice President of Operations for Elder Research with more than thirty years of experience managing healthcare and consulting businesses. Though Jeff has been deeply immersed in the analytics business in a leadership role, he well remembers his initial introduction to this rapidly-moving field and brings that layman s perspective to the book. Jeff also chairs the annual Predictive Analytics World—Healthcare conference, which attracts leading analytics professionals in the healthcare industry from around the country.
Gerhard Pilcher is Chief Executive Officer for Elder Research, with more than thirty years of analytics experience in commercial businesses and government institutions. He is an adjunct faculty member in the Math and Statistics Masters Program at Georgetown University, a regular instructor in the SAS Business Knowledge Series courses, and a member on the advisory boards of the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University and the Masters of Science in Business Analytics Program at George Washington University.

Review

"Government and Industry Executives, if you have not been comfortable with buying into a program based on advanced analytics, algorithms, and data scientists, this book will be transformational for you and your pro¬gram. It captures all the critical elements and decades of experiences into a few clear pages that will light the path for predictive improvements. I will be sharing it with my leadership and program managers. Great job, gentlemen, in making a complex equation simple to follow!" -Fred Walker Technical Director Counterintelligence, National Security Agency "Amidst the concerns about the shortage of data scientists, a larger, over¬looked obstacle is finding C-, VP-, and director-level leaders who understand enough about advanced analytics to hire, manage, and deploy solutions. Deal and Pilcher have written a practical and insightful 'primer for executives' to expertly fill this void." -Dean Abbott Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist at SmarterHQ Author of Applied Predictive Analytics "Data science and big data often don't live up to their silver bullet hype.Why? Because IT and business are so different, and so hard to harmonize. This book is an excellent remedy; Deal and Pilcher distill a decade of analytics experience into a vital guide to what works. Mining Your Own Business is a must read for anyone interested in being right-by harnessing data to drive decisions." -Peter Aiken, PhD Founding Director/Data Blueprint Associate Professor of Information Systems/Virginia Commonwealth University "Deal and Pilcher have distilled their decades of experience into an easy-to-read book that will benefit any business person dealing with analytics. They keep technical details to a minimum while focusing on the key facts, decisions, and actions that business people need to be successful with analytics. Abundant real-world examples reinforce their practical and valuable advice. Your time reading the book will be well spent!" -Bill Franks Chief Analytics Officer, Teradata Author of Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave and The Analytics Revolution "Deal and Pilcher have taken their in-depth academic and seasoned busi¬ness knowledge of analytics, and distilled it into an engaging and enlightening book that is both a "how-to" guide and a reference source. Using materials from a varied client base ranging from government agencies to hedge funds, they clearly outline the steps and best practices to develop leading-edge analytics programs. They describe sophisticated techniques and provide illustrative examples of the resulting quantifiable value. Whether you are CIO or a non-technical senior executive, this book will help you answer two key questions: How can data mining and predictive analytics advance my business? And perhaps, even more importantly, how do I get started?" -Rafael Pabon Consultant and CIO, Sherman Hill Group "I think this book could be a game-changer! Every business and government leader who has anything to do with data analytics should read it." -Yoony Doh Advanced Analytics Practice Area Lead and Project Manager Halfaker and Associates, LLC

Edition details

• Publisher: Data Science Publishing
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0996712100
• ISBN 13: 9780996712101
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 184