Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel | 
 enlarge | Author: Gordon S. Linoff
Publisher: Wiley
Category: Book
List Price: $45.00
Buy New: $30.86
You Save: $14.14 (31%)
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Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 90990
Media: Paperback
Edition: Pap/Onl
Pages: 645
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 7.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0470099518
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.7585
EAN: 9780470099513
ASIN: 0470099518
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
Pure gold October 24, 2008
Jeffrey K. Tyzzer (Sacramento, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Not only is this a first-rate book on data analysis, it's also an absolute treasure trove of useful SQL. This book belongs within arm's reach of every data analyst, business intelligence professional, reportsmith, and, most happliy in my case, those involved in data quality. If I were pressed to find one thing missing, it would be coverage of MS Query, which is embedded within Excel and allows one to connect it directly to a database and execute queries against it, thus obviating the need to cut and paste. To his credit, the author does mention this capability in chapter two, but deems it outside of the scope of the book and therefore goes no further. Perhaps he and/or his editor might consider covering it in an appendix of a future edition, which I fully expect there to be several of--this book is a generous 600+ pages of hard-earned knowledge, and deserves every one of its five-star ratings.
At last .. a practical data analysis guide! July 31, 2008
Hugh Ujhazy (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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
Review from a non-statistician and business intelligence manager June 27, 2008
ThomasT (Aurora, CO United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Data Analysis Using SQL and Excel" is an valuable resource for business intelligence and data mining practitioners in all industries. Having said that, I would like to offer some solid practical advice to potential readers that might not be fluent in statistics or data mining.
First, the reader should have a solid understanding of SQL. If the extent of your SQL interaction comes through a program on the level of Access, then you can still benefit from this book, but you will have to apply yourself more than others. Keep in mind, that proprietary releases of SQL might cause problems in directly translating the author's examples.
Second, if your statistics knowledge is a little rusty, have a secondary resource on-hand. Sometimes the definitions or explanations of the statistical concepts may not be as intuitive for some readers as they are for others.
With those caveats in mind, the reader need only to keep his or her patience and work through the concepts of the first 4-5 chapters. These chapters tend toward simple exposition of the concepts. For those with little patience, it may seem as if it is just a laundry list of concepts with little effort to tie those concepts into practical uses. Thinking like this is a great way to miss the enormous benefits of the book!
For me, the "Ah Ha!" moment came in Chapter 6 and 7. The concepts I had worked on in the previous chapters suddenly came together with customer tenure onward, when the techniques use will call to mind everything learned in the previous chapters.
In short, spend plenty of time in the first few chapters - the extra effort to master those concepts will only enhance the benefits of later chapters.
Lastly, there are a few odd differences between the text and the files downloadable from the web site. Whenever I hit a snag based on the text, opening the accompanying Excel files and seeing the formulas, queries or table/graph structures resolved all issues for me.
This is a text that will always have a place on my shelves.
A wonderful mix of theory and practice June 8, 2008
Civardi Francesco (Italy)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you work, like me, on data warehousing, data mining, analytical CRM or similar projects, this book will save you a lot of time, and provide you with a lot of inspiration.
Statistical concepts are clearly explained, and examples with very smart SQL queries and Excel sheets are shown.
For instance, no other book will explain you so clearly Survival Analysis, and how to practically implement it (I mean, with working code!).
As a previous reviewer wrote, why should you believe me? I'm one of the authors of another Wiley book, "MDX Solutions", and I earn my living by consulting with DaisyLabs, a Business Intelligence company.
Keep Gordon's book on SQL, and my book on MDX, on your desk, and no data analysis project will scare you anymore!
Nice Combination of Explanation, Business Examples and Execution March 4, 2008
Stephen J. Smith (Boston, MA United States)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wow - if you need a book that: 1. describes basic data analysis and statistical concepts in an easy to understand but thorough way. 2. uses real world business examples that you run into every day. 3. gives you the recipes of how to implement them in your business with real world computer tools like SQL and Excel. 4. and is written by a proven authority in the field (4 books and two decades of consulting). Then this is your book.
But why should you believe me? Just a little on my background. I wrote two books on databases and data analysis for McGraw-Hill: "Building Data Mining Applications for CRM" and "Data Warehousing, Data Mining and OLAP" and have led teams that have built data mining engines for super computers that later became Oracle's data mining engine, as well as implementing sophisticated data mining applictions (CART) in SQL and integrated between a relational and OALP database. Though I don't get to do a lot of 'data mining' in my current business I would definitely find this book very useful if I did.
Anyway, I thought this book was tremendously thorough in providing common sense explanations on everything from the Null Hypothesis to the Monty Hall Paradox (very cool). Buy this book if you want a single reference that will allow you to quickly solve real world business problems in a rational and doable way.
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