15 Books That Will Help Data Scientists to Increase Their Knowledge

Today every person is talking about the new business ideas and wants to start thier own dream company. But in Data Science this is little bit different and the success in this filed is mainly driven by knowledge on the particular subject. So for this practice every data scientists should read books and following are the collection of the most important books.

1. Data Science for Business:

This book is written by Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett. It gives a great head start to anyone, who is serious about doing business with big data analytics. It makes you believe, data is now business. No business in the world, can now sustain without leveraging the power of data. This book introduces you to real side of data analysis principles and algorithms without technical stuff. It gives you enough intuition and confidence to lead a team of data scientists and recommend what's required. More importantly, it teaches you the winning approach to become a master at business problem solving.

2.Big Data at Work:

This book is written by Thomas H. Davenport. It reveals the increasing importance of big data in organizations. It talks with interesting numbers, researches and statistics. So until 2009, companies worked on data samples. But with advent of powerful devices and data storage capabilities, companies now work on whole data. They don't want to miss even a single bit of information. This book unveils the real side of big data, its influence on our daily lives, on companies and our jobs. As an entrepreneur, it is extremely important for you understand big data and its related terminologies.

3. Lean Analytics:
This book is written by Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz. It's one of the most appreciated books on data startups. It consists of practical and detailed researches, advice, guidance which can help you to build your startup faster. It gives enough intuition to build data driven products and market them. The language is simple to understand. There are enough real world examples to make you believe, a business needs data analytics like a human needs air. To an entrepreneur, this will introduce the practical side of product development and what it takes to succeed in a red ocean market.

4. Moneyball:
This book is written by Michael Lewis. It's a brilliant tale which sprinkles some serious inspiration. A guy named Billy bean does what most of the world failed to imagine, just by using data and statistics. He paved the path to victory when situations weren't favorable. Running a business needs continuous motivation. This can be a good place to start with. However, this book involves technical aspects of baseball. Hence, if you don't know baseball, chances are you might struggle in initial chapters. A movie also has been made on this book.

5. Elon Musk:
This book is written by Ashlee Vance. I'm sure none of us are fortunate to live the life of Elon Musk, but this book lets us dive in his life and experience rise of fantastic future. Elon is the face behind Paypal, Tesla and SpaceX. He has dreamed of making space travel easy and cheap. Recently, he was applauded by Barack Obama for the successful landing of his spaceship in an ocean. People admire him. They want to know his secrets and this is where you can look for. As on entrepreneur, you will learn about must have ingredients which you need to become successful in technology space.

6. Keeping up with the Quants:
This book is written by Thomas H Davenport and Jinho Kim. As we all know, data science is driven by numbers and math's (quants). Inspired from money ball, this book teaches you the methods of using quantitative analysis for decision making. An entrepreneur is a terminal of decision making. One must learn to make decisions using numbers and analysis, rather than intuition. The language of this book is easy to understand and suited for non-math's background people too. Also, this book will make you comfortable with basics statistics and quantitative calculations in the world of business.

7. The Signal and the Noise:
The author of this book is Nate Silver, the famous statistician who correctly predicted US Presidential elections in 2012. This book shows the real art and science of making predictions from data. This art involves developing the ability to filter out noise and make correct predictions. It includes interesting examples which conveys the ultimate reason behind success and failure of predictions. With more and more data, predictions have become prone to noise errors. Hence, it is increasingly important to understand the science behind making predictions using big data science. The chapters of this book are interesting and intuitive.

8. When Genius Failed:
This book is written by Roger Lowenstein. It is an epic story of rise and failure of a hedge fund. For an entrepreneur, this book has ample lessons on investing, market conditions and capital management. It's a story of a small bank, which used quantitative techniques for bond pricing throughout the world and ensured every invested made gives a profitable results. However, they didn't sustain for long. Their quick rise was succeeded by failure. And, the impact of their failure was so devastating that US Federal bank stepped in to rescue the bank, because the fund bankruptcy would have large negative influence on world's economy.

9. Lean Startup:
This book is written by Eric Ries. In one line, it teaches how to not to fail at the start of your business. It reveals proven strategies which are followed by startups around the world. It has abundance of stories to make you walk on the right path. An entrepreneur should read it when he/she feel like draining out of motivation. It teaches to you to learn quickly, implement new methods and act quickly if something doesn't work out. This book applies to all industries and is not specific to data science.

10. Web Analytics 2.0:
This book is written by Avinash Kaushik. It is one of the best book to learn about web analytics. Internet is the fastest mode of collecting data. And, every entrepreneur must learn the art of internet accounting. Most of the businesses today face the challenge of weak presence on social media and internet platforms. Using various proven strategies and actionable insights, this book helps you to solve various challenges which could hamper your way. It also provides a winning template which can be applied in most of the situations. It focuses on choosing the right metric and ways to keep them in control.

11. Predictive Analytics:
This book is written by Eric Seigel. It is a good follow up book after web analytics 2.0. So, once you've understood the underlying concept of internet data, metrics and key strategies. This book teaches you the methods of using that knowledge to make predictions. It's simple to understand and covers many interesting case studies displaying how companies predict our behavior and sell us products. It doesn't cover technical aspects, but explains the general working on predictive analytics and its applications.

12. Freakonomics:
This book is written by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner. It shows the importance of numbers, data, and quantitative analysis using various interesting stories. It says there is logic is everything which happens around us. Reading this book will make you aware of the unexplored depth at which data affects our real lives. It draws interesting analogy between school teachers and sumo wrestlers. Also, the bizarre stories featuring cases of criminal acts, real-estate, drug dealers will certainly add up to your exciting moments.

13. Founders at Work:
This book is written by Jessica Livingston. Again, this isn't data science specific but a source of motivation to get you moving forward. It's a collection of interviews with the founders of various startups across the world. The focus has been kept on early days i.e. how did they act when they started. This book will give you enough proven ideas, strategies and lessons to anticipate and avoid pitfalls in your initial days of business. It consists of stories by Steve Wozniak (Apple), Max Levchin (Paypal), Caterina Fake (Flikr) and many more. In total, there are 32 interviews listed which means you have the chance to learn from 32 mentors in one single book.

14. Bootstrapping a Business:
This book is written by Greg Gianforte and Marcus Gibson. It teaches about the things to do when you are running short of money and still don't want to stop. This is a must read book for every entrepreneur. Considering the amount of investment required in data science startups, this book should have a special space in an entrepreneur's heart. It reveals various eye opening truths and strategies which can help you build a great company. Greg and Marcus prove that money is not always the reason for startup failure it's all about founder's perspective. This book has stories of success and failures, again a great chance for you to live many lives by reading this book.

15. Analytics at Work:
This book is written by Thomas H Davenport, Jeanne G Harris and Robert Morrison. This book reveals the increased use of analytical tools and concepts by managers to make informed business decisions. The decision making process has accelerated. For a greater impact, it also consists of examples from popular companies like hotels.com, best buy and many more. It talks about recruiting, coordination with people and the use of data and analytics at an enterprise level. Many of us are aware of data and analytics. But, only a few know how to use them together.

Hence, these are the collection of 15 books which every Data Scientist should read to enhance thier skills and also posses quantitative ability to become good in data science.

Source: HOB

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