Making Sense of Data: A Practical Guide to Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining

摘要

The preface of Making Sense of Data (MSD) indicates that it is aimed at various members of an entire interdisciplinary team working with data, and could also be used as an introductory textbook (undergraduate or graduate) for students in any discipline. Chapter 1 is entitled "Introduction," and gives an extremely brief overview of the subject and outline of the book. Chapter 2, "Definition," discusses objectives, deliverables, roles and responsibilities of team members, and the nature of a project plan, and closes with an outline of the elements of a case study. The third chapter, "Preparation," mentions data sources, types of data, scales of measurement, data preparation (cleaning, removing variables, transformation) and a few other odds and ends. The first three chapters comprise only 35 pages. Chapter 4 on tables and graphs takes just 14 pages to cover contingency tables, frequency polygrams, histograms, scatterplots, box plots, and multiple graphs, obviously with little detail, commentary, or interpretation.