Easy but not shallow. A nice touch on data analysi
2011-09-08
This is my first time reading the book of Orielly’s Head First series. This series is noted for its quite brain-friendly style which based on brain and cognitive science. The authors use many colloquial expressions, funny pics and dialogues in order to make the readers understood much better than the ordinary books. It is a amazing, cool and very impressive. This one, head first data analysis, is cool either. But it’s not quite easy to read for me at the beginning because of the usage of speaking language. There are many slangs and informal expressions. For the American, the reading is easy just as a person talking to you in daily life, natural and relax. On the other hand, you might be spending much time to adapt this style as a ESL reader. You need to google the phrase, the slang that you don’t know. However, slowly but shortly you will improve yourself and fit into the style finally.
In terms of this book’s contents, it’s not quite difficult to learn. It covers a number of practical usage of modern statistical methods and tools. For example, Bayesian inference, subjective probability, hypothesis testing(not in the statistical way), regression analysis and R language. And plus, the author also touches on some popular topics on data analysis, such as data visualization. Just on the level of introduction and not quite mathematical or statistical. If you want to learn more regarding statistics further, you must read Head First Statistics that the author recommended in his book. Although the book’s content is easy, you will find a couple of useful tips and stuffs in each chapter. If you read the article “what is data science” by Mike Louikides at Orielly Radar, you will be aware of the width and depth of the book concerned seems like a drop in the ocean. Anyway, the book is worth to read and the fields are deserved to delve into. When you’ve read it, don’t hesitate, keep walking.
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