Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 645 pages
• Published by: Wiley; Pap/Onl edition October 1, 2007
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0470099518
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0470099513
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Weighs: 2.2 pounds

Product Description
Useful business analysis requires you to effectively transform data into actionable information. This book helps you use SQL and Excel to extract business information from relational databases and use that data to define business dimensions, store transactions about customers, produce results, and more. Each chapter explains when and why to perform a particular type of business analysis in order to obtain useful results, how to design and perform the analysis using SQL and Excel, and what the results should look like.

Back Cover Copy
Leverage the power of SQL and Excel to perform business analysis

Three key efforts are essential to effectively transform data into actionable information: retrieving data with SQL, presenting data with Excel, and understanding statistics as the foundation of data analysis. Data mining expert Gordon Linoff focuses on these topics and shows you how SQL and Excel can be used to extract business information from relational databases. He begins by taking a look at how data is central to the task of understanding customers, products, and markets, and he then goes on to show you how to use that data to define business dimensions, store transactions about customers, and summarize important data to produce results. Along the way, he shares stories based on his personal experience in the field, intended to enrich your understanding of why some things work—and others don't.

Each chapter explains when and why to perform a particular type of business analysis in order to obtain useful results, how to design and perform the analysis using SQL and Excel, and what you can expect the results to look like. Throughout the book, critical features of Excel are highlighted, interesting uses of Excel graphics are explained, and dataflows and graphical representations of data processing are used to illustrate how SQL works.

Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel shares hints, warnings, and technical asides about Excel, SQL, and data analysis/mining. The book also discusses:

• How entity-relationship diagrams describe the structure of data
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  Ways to use SQL to generate SQL queries
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  Descriptive statistics, such as averages, p-values, and the chi-square test
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  How to incorporate geographic information into data analysis
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  Basic ideas of hazard probabilities and survival
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  How data structures summarize what a customer looks like at a specific point in time
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  Several variants of linear regression

The companion Web site provides the data sets, Excel spreadsheets, and examples featured in the book.

Reader Reviews
Having seen a multitude of books offering either statistical analysis techniques or suggestions around data mining tools, it is refreshing to see someone approach the subject using simple, readily available tools and a practical, business oriented approach to the topic. The apparently mundane subject of customer retention coupled with buying patterns and market basket analysis is laid out in an effective and sequential manner. The SQL examples take some getting used to but, once understood, offer a series of easily implemented and highly effective methods to illustrate the concepts shown in the book. As a reference guide and an illustration that one needs to know the questions to be asked of the data before investing in the latest drag and drop business intelligence tools, this book is unparalleled. The author has not stinted on providing a wealth of examples and explanation. If this tome is a reflection of how Mr Linoff and his team approach their real world consulting activities, they must be a formidable team indeed. For anyone who has wrestled with a means to understand their customer buying patterns and product affinity patterns in their historical sales data, this book cannot be beaten Comment | | (Report this)