The “handbook” appears in three parts, the first of which you download, while links to parts 2 and 3 are emailed to you for participating in a short survey. The survey collects your name, email address, educational background (STEM or not), and whether you are interested in a new resource that is being created to teach data analysis.
Let’s be clear up front that this is NOT a technical handbook.
Rather all three parts are interviews with:
Part 1: Data Analysts + Data Scientists
Part 2: CEO’s + Managers
Part 3: Researchers + Academics
Technical handbooks abound but this is one of the few (only?) books that covers the “soft” side of data analytics. By the “soft” side I mean the people and personal relationships that make up the data analytics industry. Technical knowledge is a must but being able to work well with others is as if not more important.
The interviews are wide ranging and don’t attempt to provide cut-n-dried answers. Readers will need to be inspired by and adapt the reported experiences to their own circumstances.
Of all the features of the books, I suspect I liked the “Top 5 Take Aways” the best.
In the interest of full disclosure, that maybe because part 1 reported:
2. The biggest challenge for a data analyst isn’t modeling, it’s cleaning and collecting
Data analysts spend most of their time collecting and cleaning the data required for analysis. Answering questions like “where do you collect the data?”, “how do you collect the data?”, and “how should you clean the data?”, require much more time than the actual analysis itself.
Well, when someone puts your favorite hobby horse at #2, see how you react. 😉
I first saw this in a tweet by Marin Dimitrov.