Top 15 Books on Business Analytics

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With endless book recommendations and handy pdfs available online, learners with an eye for detail and reliability continue with the traditional habit of reading books. The same goes for the books on Business Analytics Course.

 Instead of crashing several hours between numerous Internet pages, grab a properly structured book by the experts of the field and master it. 

Here you will find a carefully selected list of books for business analytics chosen based on popularity, publish date, ratings, and the ability to add value to your business. Written by recognized professionals, experts, leaders, and technology professionals, the collection covers from predictive analytics to data mining. It has something to offer even to the tenured data worker.

1. Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling by Wayne L. Winston

The award-winning author Wayne L. Winston in his “Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling” explains in detail the concepts of Microsoft Excel Data Analysis and Business Modeling and guides how you to use Excel’s newest tools from scratch. This book not only extends at great length to make you an excel expert but also provides rich content for the practical application of technical topics like time-series forecasting and multiple regression.  Packed with many practical examples, this book is what we call learn-it-yourself.

Amazon: 4.5

goodreads: 4.03

2. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

 

This book provides business professionals with a visualization guide and the tools to effectively communicate with data. You’ll get pragmatic guidance on how to present data incomprehensible manner. Filled with information, insights, and advice, this book can help anyone learn the skills needed. Learn to go beyond the conventional tools to go in-depth to understand your data and the underlying co

 

ncept of generating an informative, engaging, and convincing story.

Amazon: 4.6

goodreads: 4.4

3. SQL in 10 Minutes a Day by Ben Forta

 

Data  Retrieval is one of the basic skills that even skilled data professionals forgo. A good number of data professionals find it difficult to understand. Structured Query Language (SQL) makes it easy for the learners by enabling the learner to implement only a couple of lines of codes that helps to retrieve 1000’s of rows of data. This book provides examples for syntax in MySQ along with other multi-languages such as PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.

Get this book to learn in-depth about the concept of database and database management. Only 10 mins of reading this book regularly can help you become an expert.

Amazon: 4.6

goodreads: 4.06

4. Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

“Markets that don’t exist don’t care how smart you are”- Marc Andreesen.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur aspiring to bring a change or a start-up founder, the biggest challenge you could face is to build something that people don’t need. You certainly don’t want to fall into the pit of ineffective ideas executed effectively. Marc Andeersen will teach you step by step how to take your start-up from initial ideas to market/product friendly. Jam-packed with practical examples, a year of interviews of over a hundred founders and investors, this book is valuable and an asset for every startup practitioner everywhere.

Amazon: 4.6

goodreads: 4.12

5. Predictive Analytics for Dummies

You don’t have to be brilliant to predict the future. All it takes is a little knowledge and dexterity, and Predictive Analytics for Dummies helps to get you there. With this friendly guide by your side, you’ll learn how to incorporate algorithms through data models, find similarities and relationships in your data, and predict the future through data classification. You’ll discover the core of predictive analytics and start to put in use the right algorithms and tools to collect and analyze data. Within no time you will find yourself making valuable predictions for your business, or fields of advertising, politics, and fraud detection.

Amazon: 4.3

goodreads: 4.00

6. Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data by Charles Wheelan

A best-selling author Charles Wheelan uncovers the secret and technical details that explain the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis.

“[Wheelan] does something unique here: he makes statistics interesting and fun. His book strips the subject of its complexity to expose the sexy stuff underneath.”

– The Economist

This book will give you a great insight into the key topics of descriptive, inference, probability, and regression.

 “How can schools be caught on cheating in standardized tests?”How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? Read the books to get the answers.

Amazon: 4.6

goodreads: 3.94

7. Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

How does Predictive Analytics work? Former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World Founder Eric Siegel unravel the power and threat of prediction in his masterwork “Predictive Analytics”. This jam-packed book with a luminous, striking introduction demystifies the science under the hood. Beginners and experts alike can pick this for a strong foundation that covers new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

  Amazon: 4.3

  goodreads: 3.67

8. Business Analytics: Data Analysis & Decision Making

Business Analytics: Data Analysis & Decision Making with its student-friendly writing style, learn-by-example approach and complete Excel 2016 integration can help to speed your progress and become a master of data analysis. It has three online chapters to advanced statistical analysis with tools to master data analysis, modeling, and learn the use of spreadsheets. This book is data-oriented with a new chapter on two main Power BI tools in Excel- Power Query and Power Pivot- and a section covering data visualization with Tableau Public. 

Pick this book to study data mining, importing data into excel, tools commonly under the Business Analytics Umbrella with up-to-date case studies and practical examples along with a Companion Website that includes data and solution files, SolverTable for sensitivity analysis, PowerPoint slides, and Palisade Decision Tools Suite.

Amazon: 4.00

goodreads: 3.7

9.  Data Strategy: How to Profit from a World of Big Data, Analytics and the Internet of Things by Bernard Marr

 

Data Strategy by Bernard Marr is a must-have for anyone seeking to create a robust data strategy. This book explains how to understand your data strategic needs, what methods to use to gather data, and primarily how to translate your data into organizational insights to perk up business decision-making and performance. This is a must-read book for anyone who intends to leverage the value of business data and increase competitive advantage.

Business aficionados grab this book to learn the tools and strategies required to profit from big data, analytics, and the Internet of Things.

Amazon Review: 4.2

goodreads: 3.8

10. Practical Tableau: 100 Tips, Tutorials, and Strategies from a Tableau by Ryan Sleeper

Tableau is the most commonly used visualization and dashboard tool in the industry. The importance of Tableau is further confirmed by Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the leadership position for the long run. Ryan Sleeper is a professional Tableau consultant and has stuffed the book with his rich experience with an easy-to-understand approach.

The book has 5 parts- Fundamentals, framework, chart types, tips and tricks, and storytelling. Each section is backed up with an illustrative explanation of concepts with examples.

Grab this book if you want answers to questions like-

1. Why are we creating this chart?

 2. How to create the chart?

 3. How to create with visualization?

Amazon: 4.5

goodreads: 4.28

11. Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython by Wes McKinney

Do you wonder how to manipulate the data you have? Do you want to in-depth explore the relationship between variables, identify and change the different data types? These tasks can be easily achieved with easy use of code in python. Books for business analytics professionals use python to perform descriptive analysis and adopt Explanatory Data Analysis to find patterns, trends, and the relationship between various variables to draw insights and make better business decisions.

Pick this book if you want to learn about Numpy, matplotlib, statsmodel, pandas, scikit-learn.

Amazon: 4.6

goodreads: 4.14

12.  The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking by Barbara Minto

The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto is an eye-opener. This book is lucid, illustrative when it comes to elucidating communication and structured thinking of people of any career. It is used in many colleges and by companies like Delloite, EY, etc to coach them to communicate effectively.

Even after 25+years of its publication, it is still a highly recommended book to learn how to write technical and persuasive work in any language. If you have one book to learn how to present an idea, then this is it. It also helps to make your presentation brief, comprehensible and impactful.

Amazon: 4.5

goodreads: 4.04

13. Data Analytics: The Ultimate Guide to Data Analytics

Data Analytics, yet another bestselling book gives a lucid insight into how to use data to improve competence, fasten growth and increase sales. Learn the skill to leverage the power of data in your business, job, and school. Edward Mire, the multi-time bestselling author presents a perfect data analytics guide to beginners. Well-known for his ability to break down hard topics into easy-to-understandable words, you’ll not have any issues understanding the concepts. The book is a compilation of the most practical data analytics that will make you understand the methodologies to quickly and easily fix holes in your execution in operations, sales, and marketing.

Amazon: 3.6

goodreads: 2.76

14. Data Analytics: Become A Master In Data Analytics

“Analyzing data is not easy, due to the fact that you have to figure out which type of data analytics you are going to use, as well as defeat the challenges that you will come up against when it comes to analyzing data. With this book, it is our goal to show you the easiest way to work with data analytics and how you are going to avoid some of the challenges and risks that you will be putting yourself up against when you are working with data. You will realize that analyzing data is not the easiest thing in the world. However, it is going to get easier the more that you practice. Just guarantee that you are taking the time to practice and do not put too much pressure on yourself.”

Amazon: 3.5

goodreads: 2.84

15. Data Science for Business: What You Need To Know About Data Mining And Data-Analytic Thinking

Data Science for Business presents examples of real-world business problems to illustrate the principles based on an MBA course taught in New York University for over ten years. Learn to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists and participate in the company’s data science projects.

Grab this book to learn to think data-analytically and how data science supports business decision-making.

Amazon: 4.5

goodreads: 4.15

Before plunging into any of these books, let’s first understand some of the important questions related to Books for business analytics.

What is Business Analytics?

Books for business analytics for beginners is a process by which businesses use methodological and statistical analytics to perform and transform data into useful insights and information to make better business decisions. This helps to retrieve historical data to analyze outcomes, anticipate trends and eventually take appropriate business decisions. The main components of the business analytics dashboard consist of Data Aggregation, Data Mining, Association, and Sequence Identification, Text Mining, Forecasting, Predictive Analytics, Optimization, Data Visualization.

What is the significance of Business Analytics?

Books for business analytics helps businesses to find out how companies vary using the latest marketing strategies. It also evaluates the past marketing strategies which help to address challenges and increase productivity and sales.

Hence, learning Data Analytics and learning it well will help you take better business decisions to foster fast progress and market recognition.

Benefits of Business Analytics-

1. Improve Customer Service

2. Make Informed Decisions

3. Reduce the Sales of the Employees

4. Performance Enhancement

5. Fraud Identification in Finance Businesses.

Where can we learn Business Analytics?

With the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, online education has become the only source of educational hope for the learners. Online educational providers have made it easy for learners to register for any course they wish to. Apart from the books, you can always begin with taking an expert trained professional course. Henry Harvin ‘s Business Analytics with R course is one of the best online courses to start your business analytics journey. 

Look at some of the benefits you receive registering with Henry Harvin:

1. Live Projects

2. Guaranteed Internship

3. Weekly Job Support

4. Recorded Videos

5. Monthly Brushup Sessions

6. Interview Skills

7. Career Services

Get 1- year Membership of Henry Harvin® Finance Academy to avail of the above benefits. Visit the site for further details.

What makes reading on a specialized topic so important?

Reading books on the specialized field plays a significant role in enhancing your capacity to add value to your job. When the internet can provide you with a ton of productive information, what truly matters is how much of the information and what among the available tools should be adopted and executed to make learning better and a build successful career. In this case, only a well-researched book can help.

Books are backed up with information from practitioners of the field. Developing the capacity to understand the skill and execute an idea in a real-life situation makes a book truly valuable and suggestive to read. So make sure to do proper research on the writer and the topics covered before you go and buy a book. This will give you a good insight into what is stored for you. Good research goes a long way and reduces a tremendous amount of time when learning all the important skills required to master your field.

How to select the right book?

 To select the right book for your field follow the below points-

1. Research well on the writer

2. Research well on the topic.

3. Go through the review.

4. Read the blurbs of all the possible books of interest.

5. Ask a field expert.

Also Check Henry Harvin Review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkAGuP6H13U

Conclusion:

The given list of books above is in no order of priority. Read the list thoroughly and go for the best that suits your demand. Business analytics books for beginners is a demanding career and you can start it with a good book in hand and a professional course to train you.

Recommended Reads:

• Top 10 Business Analytics Course in India
• Top 10 Business Analytics Course in USA
• Top 10 Business Analytics Course in Bangladesh
• Top 10 Business Analytics Course in Singapore
• What is Business Analytics 

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