A non-technical guide to leveraging retail analytics for personal and competitive advantage Style & Statistics is a real-world guide to analytics in retail. Written specifically for the non-IT crowd, this book explains analytics in an approachable, understandable way, and provides examples of direct application to retail merchandise management, marketing, and operations. The discussion covers current industry trends and emerging-standard processes, and illustrates how analytics is providing new solutions to perennial retail problems. You'll learn how to leverage the benefits of analytics to boost your personal career, and how to interpret data in a way that's useful to the average end business user or shopper. Key concepts are detailed in easy-to-understand language, and numerous examples highlight the growing importance of understanding analytics in the retail environment. The power of analytics has become apparent across industries, but it's left an especially indelible mark on retail. It's a complex topic, but you don't need to be a data scientist to take advantage of the opportunities it brings. This book shows you what you need to know, and how to put analytics to work with retail-specific applications. Learn how analytics can help you be better at your job Dig deeper into the customer's needs, wants, and dreams Streamline merchandise management, pricing, marketing, and more Find solutions for inefficiencies and inaccuracies As the retail customer evolves, so must the retail industry. The retail landscape not only includes in-store but also website, mobile site, mobile apps, and social media . With more and more competition emerging on all sides, retailers need to use every tool at their disposal to create value and gain a competitive advantage. Analytics offers a number of ways to make your company stand out, whether it's through improved operations, customer experience, or any of the other myriad factors that build a great place to shop. Style & Statistics provides an analytics primer with a practical bent, specifically for the retail industry.

Tableau 10 Business Intelligence Cookbook is your comprehensive guide to mastering data analysis and visualization using Tableau 10. You will gain confidence in creating powerful, interactive dashboards and visualizations that not only look great but also help convey critical insights effectively. What this Book will help me do Create and customize effective charts including bar charts, line graphs, and scatter plots. Build interactive dashboards that combine visualizations into cohesive data presentations. Leverage Tableau's calculated fields and parameters to implement advanced data transformations. Prepare and clean your data for analysis using built-in Tableau tools to ensure accuracy. Utilize geospatial and mapping features to visualize geographic and location-based data effectively. Author(s) Donabel Santos is an experienced data specialist and Tableau expert with a passion for teaching data visualization techniques. Paul Banoub, a seasoned business intelligence professional, brings practical insights into crafting effective data strategies using Tableau. Together, they create a book that empowers professionals to realize their data visualization goals. Who is it for? This book is ideal for business professionals, data analysts, and technology experts looking to enhance their Tableau skills. Beginners will find the recipes approachable thanks to the step-by-step guidance, while more advanced users will appreciate the depth of techniques covered. Whether you analyze data for business intelligence or strategic planning, this book will provide tools to expand your capabilities.

Visualizing Graph Data teaches you not only how to build graph data structures, but also how to create your own dynamic and interactive visualizations using a variety of tools. This book is loaded with fascinating examples and case studies to show you the real-world value of graph visualizations. About the Technology Assume you are doing a great job collecting data about your customers and products. Are you able to turn your rich data into important insight? Complex relationships in large data sets can be difficult to recognize. Visualizing these connections as graphs makes it possible to see the patterns, so you can find meaning in an otherwise over-whelming sea of facts. About the Book Visualizing Graph Data teaches you how to understand graph data, build graph data structures, and create meaningful visualizations. This engaging book gently introduces graph data visualization through fascinating examples and compelling case studies. You'll discover simple, but effective, techniques to model your data, handle big data, and depict temporal and spatial data. By the end, you'll have a conceptual foundation as well as the practical skills to explore your own data with confidence. What's Inside Techniques for creating effective visualizations Examples using the Gephi and KeyLines visualization packages Real-world case studies About the Reader No prior experience with graph data is required. About the Author Corey Lanum has decades of experience building visualization and analysis applications for companies and government agencies around the globe. Quotes Shows you how to solve visualization problems and explore complex data sets. A pragmatic introduction. - John D. Lewis, DDN Excellent! Hands-on! Shows you how to kick-start your graph data visualization. - Rocio Chongtay, University of Southern Denmark A clear and concise guide to both graph theory and visualization. - Jonathan Suever, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology Great coverage, with real-life business use cases. - Sumit Pal, Big Data consultant

This book is for everyone who wants to make better forecasts. It is not about mathematics and statistics. It is about following a well-established forecasting process to create and implement good forecasts. This is true whether you are forecasting global markets, sales of SKUs, competitive strategy, or market disruptions. Today, most forecasts are generated using software. However, no amount of technology and statistics can compensate for a poor forecasting process. Forecasting is not just about generating a number. Forecasters need to understand the problems they are trying to solve. They also need to follow a process that is justifiable to other parties and be implemented in practice. This is what the book is about. Accurate forecasts are essential for predicting demand, identifying new market opportunities, forecasting risks, disruptions, innovation, competition, market growth and trends. Companies can navigate this daunting landscape and improve their forecasts by following some well-established principles. This book is written to provide the fundamentals business leaders need in order to make good forecasts. These fundamentals hold true regardless of what is being forecast and what technology is being used. It provides the basic foundational principles all companies need to achieve competitive forecast accuracy.

Real-world tips for creating business value Details on modeling, data clustering, and more Enterprise use cases to help you get started Learn to predict the future! Business today relies on effectively using data to predict trends and sales. Predictive analytics is the tool that can make it happen, and this book eliminates the tricks and shows you how to use it. You'll learn to prepare and process your data, create goals, build a predictive model, get your organization's stakeholders on board, and more. Inside... How to start a project Identifying data types Modeling tips Working with algorithms How data clustering works How data classification works How deep learning works Advice on presentations Step-by-step predictive modeling

Since this book first published in 2006, the field of information visualization has drastically. First, information visualization has exploded online and on other digital platforms. Second, information graphics reporting has encompassed nearly every sector of communications and business. This edition seeks to address these changes by providing learners with a cross-platform, cross-industry approach to instruction. It will include a robust, dynamic website complete with regularly updated examples of print, online and broadcast graphics, as well as useful tutorials and exercises.

Presents an introduction to differential equations, probability, and stochastic processes with real-world applications of queues with delay and delayed network queues Featuring recent advances in queueing theory and modeling, Delayed and Network Queues provides the most up-to-date theories in queueing model applications. Balancing both theoretical and practical applications of queueing theory, the book introduces queueing network models as tools to assist in the answering of questions on cost and performance that arise throughout the life of a computer system and signal processing. Written by well-known researchers in the field, the book presents key information for understanding the essential aspects of queues with delay and networks of queues with unreliable nodes and vacationing servers. Beginning with simple analytical fundamentals, the book contains a selection of realistic and advanced queueing models that address current deficiencies. In addition, the book presents the treatment of queues with delay and networks of queues, including possible breakdowns and disruptions that may cause delay. Delayed and Network Queues also features: Numerous examples and exercises with applications in various fields of study such as mathematical sciences, biomathematics, engineering, physics, business, health industry, and economics A wide array of practical applications of network queues and queueing systems, all of which are related to the appropriate stochastic processes Up-to-date topical coverage such as single- and multiserver queues with and without delays, along with the necessary fundamental coverage of probability and difference equations Discussions on queueing models such as single- and multiserver Markovian queues with balking, reneging, delay, feedback, splitting, and blocking, as well as their role in the treatment of networks of queues with and without delay and network reliability Delayed and Network Queues is an excellent textbook for upper-undergraduate and graduate-level courses in applied mathematics, queueing theory, queueing systems, probability, and stochastic processes. The book is also an ideal reference for academics and practitioners in mathematical sciences, biomathematics, operations research, management, engineering, physics, business, economics, health industry, and industrial engineering. Aliakbar Montazer Haghighi, PhD, is Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at Prairie View A&M University, USA, as well as founding Editor-in-Chief of Applications and Applied Mathematics: An International Journal (AAM). His research interests include probability, statistics, stochastic processes, and queueing theory. Among his research publications and books, Dr. Haghighi is the coauthor of Difference and Differential Equations with Applications in Queueing Theory (Wiley, 2013). Dimitar P. Mishev, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Prairie View A&M University, USA. His research interests include differential and difference equations and queueing theory. The author of numerous research papers and three books, Dr. Mishev is the coauthor of Difference and Differential Equations with Applications in Queueing Theory (Wiley, 2013).

Unleash the power of data by creating interactive, engaging, and compelling visualizations for the web About This Book Get a portable, versatile, and flexible data visualization design approach that will help you navigate the complex path towards success Get thorough explanation of the many visual variables and visualization taxonomy to provide you with a menu of creative options A comprehensive and contemporary introduction to data-driven visualization design and the most effective approaches to designing impact-maximizing and cognition-amplifying visualizations Who This Book Is For This course is for developers who are excited about data and who want to share that excitement with others and it will be handy for the web developers or data scientists who want to create interactive visualizations for the web. Prior knowledge of developing web applications is required. You should have a working knowledge of both JavaScript and HTML. What You Will Learn Harness the power of D3 by building interactive and real-time data-driven web visualizations Find out how to use JavaScript to create compelling visualizations of social data Identify the purpose of your visualization and your project's parameters to determine overriding design considerations across your project's execution Apply critical thinking to visualization design and get intimate with your dataset to identify its potential visual characteristics Explore the various features of HTML5 to design creative visualizations Discover what data is available on Stack Overflow, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ Gain a solid understanding of the common D3 development idioms Find out how to write basic D3 code for server using Node.js In Detail Do you want to create more attractive charts? Or do you have huge data sets and need to unearth the key insights in a visual manner? Data visualization is the representation and presentation of data, using proven design techniques to bring alive the patterns, stories, and key insights that are locked away. This learning path is divided into three modules. The first module will equip you with the key techniques required to overcome contemporary data visualization challenges. After getting familiar with key concepts of data visualization, it's time to incorporate it with various technologies. In the second module, Social Data Visualization with HTML5 and JavaScript, it teaches you how to leverage HTML5 techniques through JavaScript to build visualizations. It also clears up how the often complicated OAuth protocol works to help you unlock a universe of social media data from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Once you are familiar with the concepts of incorporating data visualization with HTML5 and JavaScript, third module, Learning d3.js Data Visualization, will lead you to D3, which has emerged as one of the leading platforms to develop beautiful, interactive visualizations over the web. This module provides a strong foundation in designing compelling web visualizations with D3.js. By the end of this course, you will have unlocked the mystery behind successful data visualizations. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Data Visualization: a successful design process by Andy Kirk Social Data Visualization with HTML5 and JavaScript by Simon Timms Learning d3.js Data Visualization, Second Edition by Ændrew Rininsland and Swizec Teller Style and approach This course includes all the resources that will help you jump into creating interactive and engaging visualizations for the web. Through this comprehensive course, you’ll learn how to create engaging visualizations for the web to represent your data from start to finish! Downloading the example code for this book. You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.PacktPub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.PacktPub.com/support and register to have the code file.

In "Learning Tableau 10: Business Intelligence and data visualization that brings your business into focus", you will master data visualization and storytelling using Tableau 10. From foundational concepts to advanced features, this book will enable you to create compelling dashboards and conduct powerful data analysis, empowering businesses with actionable insights. What this Book will help me do Master the creation of effective and visually attractive dashboards in Tableau. Learn techniques for preparing and cleaning data for accurate visualizations. Build advanced visualizations that clarify and communicate complex ideas. Explore data clustering and distribution modeling to identify trends and make forecasts. Share your Tableau creations to promote a culture of evidence-based decision making. Author(s) The authors of 'Learning Tableau 10' are seasoned professionals with extensive experience in business intelligence and data visualization. They bring practical industry insights and a passion for empowering readers through clear instructional design. Their goal is to enable businesses to harness the full potential of Tableau for data-driven success. Who is it for? This book is ideal for data analysts, business professionals, or newcomers to data visualization who want to learn Tableau 10 from scratch or upgrade their skills. It is perfectly suited for beginners striving to bring professional insights and advanced users seeking to leverage Tableau's latest features effectively.

Practical Data Analysis provides a hands-on guide to mastering essential data analysis techniques using tools like Pandas, MongoDB, and Apache Spark. With step-by-step instructions, you'll explore how to process diverse data types, apply machine learning methods, and uncover actionable insights that can drive innovative projects and business solutions. What this Book will help me do Master data acquisition, formatting, and visualization techniques to prepare your data for analysis. Understand and apply machine learning algorithms for tasks like classification and forecasting. Learn to analyze textual data, such as performing sentiment analysis and text classification. Effectively work with databases using tools like MongoDB and handle big data with Apache Spark. Develop data-driven applications using real-world examples like image similarity searches and social network graph analysis. Author(s) None Cuesta and Dr. Sampath Kumar are experienced data scientists and educators. They have considerable experience applying data analysis techniques in various domains and a passion for teaching these skills. Their practical approach to data analysis ensures an engaging learning experience for readers. Who is it for? This book is ideal for developers and data enthusiasts aiming to incorporate practical data analysis into their projects. It is perfectly suited for readers with basic programming, statistics, and linear algebra knowledge. Even if you're new to professional data analysis, you'll find the step-by-step examples approachable. This book guides you in transforming raw data into valuable insights.

A thoroughly revised and updated edition of this introduction to modern statistical methods for shape analysis Shape analysis is an important tool in the many disciplines where objects are compared using geometrical features. Examples include comparing brain shape in schizophrenia; investigating protein molecules in bioinformatics; and describing growth of organisms in biology. This book is a significant update of the highly-regarded `Statistical Shape Analysis’ by the same authors. The new edition lays the foundations of landmark shape analysis, including geometrical concepts and statistical techniques, and extends to include analysis of curves, surfaces, images and other types of object data. Key definitions and concepts are discussed throughout, and the relative merits of different approaches are presented. The authors have included substantial new material on recent statistical developments and offer numerous examples throughout the text. Concepts are introduced in an accessible manner, while retaining sufficient detail for more specialist statisticians to appreciate the challenges and opportunities of this new field. Computer code has been included for instructional use, along with exercises to enable readers to implement the applications themselves in R and to follow the key ideas by hands-on analysis. Statistical Shape Analysis: with Applications in R will offer a valuable introduction to this fast-moving research area for statisticians and other applied scientists working in diverse areas, including archaeology, bioinformatics, biology, chemistry, computer science, medicine, morphometics and image analysis .

Illustrate your data in a more interactive way by implementing data visualization principles and creating visual stories using Tableau About This Book Use data visualization principles to help you to design dashboards that enlighten and support business decisions Integrate your data to provide mashed-up dashboards Connect to various data sources and understand what data is appropriate for Tableau Public Understand chart types and when to use specific chart types with different types of data Who This Book Is For Data scientists who have just started using Tableau and want to build on the skills using practical examples. Familiarity with previous versions of Tableau will be helpful, but not necessary. What You Will Learn Customize your designs to meet the needs of your business using Tableau Use Tableau to prototype, develop, and deploy the final dashboard Create filled maps and use any shape file Discover features of Tableau Public, from basic to advanced Build geographic maps to bring context to data Create filters and actions to allow greater interactivity to Tableau Public visualizations and dashboards Publish and embed Tableau visualizations and dashboards in articles In Detail With increasing interest for data visualization in the media, businesses are looking to create effective dashboards that engage as well as communicate the truth of data. Tableau makes data accessible to everyone, and is a great way of sharing enterprise dashboards across the business. Tableau is a revolutionary toolkit that lets you simply and effectively create high-quality data visualizations. This course starts with making you familiar with its features and enable you to develop and enhance your dashboard skills, starting with an overview of what dashboard is, followed by how you can collect data using various mathematical formulas. Next, you'll learn to filter and group data, as well as how to use various functions to present the data in an appealing and accurate way. In the first module, you will learn how to use the key advanced string functions to play with data and images. You will be walked through the various features of Tableau including dual axes, scatterplot matrices, heat maps, and sizing.In the second module, you'll start with getting your data into Tableau, move onto generating progressively complex graphics, and end with the finishing touches and packaging your work for distribution. This module is filled with practical examples to help you create filled maps, use custom markers, add slider selectors, and create dashboards. You will learn how to manipulate data in various ways by applying various filters, logic, and calculating various aggregate measures. Finally, in the third module, you learn about Tableau Public using which allows readers to explore data associations in multiple-sourced public data, and uses state-of-the-art dashboard and chart graphics to immerse the users in an interactive experience. In this module, the readers can quickly gain confidence in understanding and expanding their visualization, creation knowledge, and quickly create interesting, interactive data visualizations to bring a richness and vibrancy to complex articles. The course provides a great overview for beginner to intermediate Tableau users, and covers the creation of data visualizations of varying complexities. Style and approach The approach will be a combined perspective, wherein we start by performing some basic recipes and move on to some advanced ones. Finally, we perform some advanced analytics and create appealing and insightful data stories using Tableau Public in a step-by-step manner.

Nonparametric statistics provide a scientific methodology for cases where customary statistics are not applicable. Nonparametric statistics are used when the requirements for parametric analysis fail, such as when data are not normally distributed or the sample size is too small. The method provides an alternative for such cases and is often nearly as powerful as parametric statistics. Another advantage of nonparametric statistics is that it offers analytical methods that are not available otherwise. Nonparametric methods are intuitive and simple to comprehend, which helps researchers in the social sciences understand the methods in spite of lacking mathematical rigor needed in analytical methods customarily used in science. This book is a methodology book and bypasses theoretical proofs while providing comprehensive explanations of the logic behind the methods and ample examples, which are all solved using direct computations as well as by using Stata. It is arranged into two integrated volumes. Although each volume, and for that matter each chapter, can be used separately, it is advisable to read as much of both volumes as possible; because familiarity with what is applicable for different problems will enhance capabilities.

Nonparametric statistics provide a scientific methodology for cases where customary statistics are not applicable. Nonparametric statistics are used when the requirements for parametric analysis fail, such as when data are not normally distributed or the sample size is too small. The method provides an alternative for such cases and is often nearly as powerful as parametric statistics. Another advantage of nonparametric statistics is that it offers analytical methods that are not available otherwise. Nonparametric methods are intuitive and simple to comprehend, which helps researchers in the social sciences understand the methods in spite of lacking mathematical rigor needed in analytical methods customarily used in science. This book is a methodology book and bypasses theoretical proofs while providing comprehensive explanations of the logic behind the methods and ample examples, which are all solved using direct computations as well as by using Stata. It is arranged into two integrated volumes. Although each volume, and for that matter each chapter, can be used separately, it is advisable to read as much of both volumes as possible; because familiarity with what is applicable for different problems will enhance capabilities.

Create Beautiful Visualizations that Free Your Data to Tell Powerful Truths “The depth of Barrett Clark’s knowledge shines through in his writing: clear, concise, and confident. Barrett has been practicing all of this stuff in his day job for many years–Postgres, D3, GIS, all of it. The knowledge in this book is real-world and hard-earned!” –From the Foreword by Obie Fernandez is your hands-on, practical, and holistic guide to the art of visualizing data. You’ll learn how to use Rails, jQuery, D3, Leaflet, PostgreSQL, and PostGIS together, creating beautiful visualizations and maps that give your data a voice and to make it “dance.” Data Visualization Toolkit Barrett Clark teaches through real-world problems and examples developed specifically to illuminate every technique you need to generate stunningly effective visualizations. You’ll move from the absolute basics toward deep dives, mastering diverse visualizations and discovering when to use each. Along the way, you’ll build three start-to-finish visualization applications, using actual real estate, weather, and travel datasets. Clark addresses every component of data visualization: your data, database, application server, visualization libraries, and more. He explains data transformations; presents expert techniques in JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL; and illuminates key concepts associated with both descriptive statistics and geospatial data. Throughout, everything is aimed at one goal: to help you cut through the clutter and let your data tell all it can. This guide will help you Explore and understand the data visualization technology stack Master the thought process and steps involved in importing data Extract, transform, and load data in usable, reliable form Handle spotty data, or data that doesn’t line up with what your chart expects Use D3 to build pie and bar charts, scatter and box plots, and more Work effectively with time-series data Tweak Ruby and SQL to optimize performance with large datasets Use raw SQL in Rails: window functions, subqueries, and common table expressions Build chord diagrams and time-series aggregates Use separate databases or schema for reporting databases Integrate geographical data via geospatial SQL queries Construct maps with Leaflet and Rails Query geospatial data the “Rails way” and the “raw SQL way”

Most decisions and plans in a firm require a forecast. Not matching supply with demand can make or break any business, and that's why forecasting is so invaluable. Forecasting can appear as a frightening topic with many arcane equations to master. For this reason, the authors start out from the very basics and provide a non-technical overview of common forecasting techniques as well as organizational aspects of creating a robust forecasting process. The book also discusses how to measure forecast accuracy to hold people accountable and guide continuous improvement. This book does not require prior knowledge of higher mathematics, statistics, or operations research. It is designed to serve as a first introduction to the non-expert, such as a manager overseeing a forecasting group, or an MBA student who needs to be familiar with the broad outlines of forecasting without specializing in it.

Learn all of Excel's statistical tools Test your hypotheses and draw conclusions Use Excel to give meaning to your data Use Excel to interpret stats Statistical analysis with Excel is incredibly useful—and this book shows you that it can be easy, too! You'll discover how to use Excel's perfectly designed tools to analyze and understand data, predict trends, make decisions, and more. Tackle the technical aspects of Excel and start using them to interpret your data! Inside... Covers Excel 2016 for Windows® & Mac® users Check out new Excel stuff Make sense of worksheets Create shortcuts Tool around with analysis Use Quick Statistics Graph your data Work with probability Handle random variables

What is text mining, and how can it be used? What relevance do these methods have to everyday work in information science and the digital humanities? How does one develop competences in text mining? Working with Text provides a series of cross-disciplinary perspectives on text mining and its applications. As text mining raises legal and ethical issues, the legal background of text mining and the responsibilities of the engineer are discussed in this book. Chapters provide an introduction to the use of the popular GATE text mining package with data drawn from social media, the use of text mining to support semantic search, the development of an authority system to support content tagging, and recent techniques in automatic language evaluation. Focused studies describe text mining on historical texts, automated indexing using constrained vocabularies, and the use of natural language processing to explore the climate science literature. Interviews are included that offer a glimpse into the real-life experience of working within commercial and academic text mining. Introduces text analysis and text mining tools Provides a comprehensive overview of costs and benefits Introduces the topic, making it accessible to a general audience in a variety of fields, including examples from biology, chemistry, sociology, and criminology

Learn how to turn raw data into rich, interactive web visualizations with the powerful combination of Python and JavaScript. With this hands-on guide, author Kyran Dale teaches you how build a basic dataviz toolchain with best-of-breed Python and JavaScript libraries—including Scrapy, Matplotlib, Pandas, Flask, and D3—for crafting engaging, browser-based visualizations. As a working example, throughout the book Dale walks you through transforming Wikipedia’s table-based list of Nobel Prize winners into an interactive visualization. You’ll examine steps along the entire toolchain, from scraping, cleaning, exploring, and delivering data to building the visualization with JavaScript’s D3 library. If you’re ready to create your own web-based data visualizations—and know either Python or JavaScript— this is the book for you. Learn how to manipulate data with Python Understand the commonalities between Python and JavaScript Extract information from websites by using Python’s web-scraping tools, BeautifulSoup and Scrapy Clean and explore data with Python’s Pandas, Matplotlib, and Numpy libraries Serve data and create RESTful web APIs with Python’s Flask framework Create engaging, interactive web visualizations with JavaScript’s D3 library

Choose, manage, and present data Select the right forecasting method for your business Use moving averages and predict seasonal sales Create sales forecasts you can trust You don't need magic, luck, or an advanced math degree to develop reliable sales forecasts; you just need Excel and this book! This guide explains how forecasting works and how to use the tools built into Excel. You'll learn how to choose your data, set up tables, chart your baseline, to create both basic and advanced forecasts you can really use. Inside... Prevent common issues Why baselines matter How to organize your data Tips on setting up tables Working with pivot charts How to forecast seasonal sales revenue Forecasting with regression