It is truly said that a book is an entrepreneur’s best friend, beaming with opportunities and information waiting to be utilized. Although, the world of business is pretty old but the outcomes have never been as lucrative as they seem to be these days. There was a time when ‘start-up’ as a concept was the Wild West and today it has become the hottest thing!
For around 1 of every three, businesses start with a gut feeling where one strongly believes in his idea, innovation happens. Heading towards data science, the story seems to be entirely different. With revolutionary changes improving the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science, one may find pretty hard to cope up with the rapid advancements in technology. In order to ease your curiosity and dilemma, I have come up with top seven technical reads in data science that won’t just help you in staying ahead of the curve but also offer you a sound knowledge of how work is being done.
Before we start our list, it is very important for you to understand that data science as a field is mainly driven by the knowledge of the subject. So keep closely following all its related books, update, and events. Apart from this, you can even work for 5-6 years in data science, learn the required things around and get started with your business.
Must-reads in data science and analytics
Further below, I would like to shed some light on certain must-reads in the world of analytics.
1. Data Science for Business: Written by Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett, the book provides a quick head start to any person seeking for Data science as a career. It firmly makes you believe that data has now become a new business. To be very precise, no business can sustain well without leveraging the power of massive amounts of data. Further speaking about the book, it introduces you to a real side of data analysis principles and algorithms without much technical stuff. After reading this, I am sure you will get enough intuition and confidence to lead a team of data scientists and recommend everything that’s required. So, are you ready to take up the winning approach?
2. Big Data at Work: Thomas H. Davenport reveals here the increasing importance of big data in any organization. Here he reveals an interesting bunch of numbers, researchers, and stats. Until 2009, several companies use to work on data samples but with the advent of powerful devices and data storage campaigns, companies have started working on whole data. If you wish to unveil the real side of big data analytics, this book is the one worth your time.
3. The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company- Over 100,000 entrepreneurs have relied on Steve Blank and Bob Dorf’s manual for startup owners. The book basically summarizes a highly successful customer development process that entrepreneurs can use to drive their business towards profitability. I personally would suggest that it’s the perfect resource for anybody looking to maximize their startup’s chances of success by simply developing their customers in order to create repeatable, scalable profits.
4. Good to Great: As the name simply implies, Good to great is written by Jim Collins set out to answer several questions about how does an organization go from good to great. It may quite interest you to know that to write such kind of book, he deployed a 21-person team (research) to go through every fortune 500 company that met their scrupulous criteria: companies that suffered a decade-long period of stagnant profits. The companies in general comprised of 15 years of great success and increasing profits. As a result, they ended up being a foundational case studies for the book.
5. Elon Musk: This one is my favorite, written by Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk allows us to dive into his life and experience rise of the fantastic looking future. It may quite interest you to know that this guy is the face behind Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX. He even carries a vision of making space travel easy and cheap. A few years back, he was even applauded by Barack Obama for the successful landing of his spaceship in an ocean. So if you want to know his secret and this is where one can look for.
6. When Genius Failed: Written by Roger Lowenstein, When Genius Failed turns out to be an epic story of rise and failure of a hedge fund. Being an entrepreneur, the book seems to be a one-stop shop featuring ample of lessons in terms of investing, market conditions and capital management. To cut the long story short, there is a small bank which uses quantitative techniques for bond pricing throughout the world and ensuring every invested made gives a profitable result. A quick rise is always succeeded by failure just keep this in mind.
7. Predictive Analytics: The book can be considered as an interesting follow up after you have understood the underlying concept of internet data, metrics and key strategies. As the name suggests, predictive analytics teaches you different methods of using that knowledge when it’s about making appropriate predictions. Being simple in terms of understanding, it offers different cases displaying the ways companies predict in terms of behavior and sell products. In addition to this, here I would like you to check out this funny rap video by Dr. Eric Seigel, the writer of Predictive Analytics:
