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    Cover of Data Smart

    Data Smart

    John W. Foreman · 2013

    "Data Science gets thrown around in the press like it's magic. Major retailers are predicting everything from when their customers are pregnant to when they want a new pair of Chuck Taylors. It's a brave new world where seemingly meaningless data can be transformed into valuable insight to drive smart business decisions. But how does one exactly do data science? Do you have to hire one of these priests of the dark arts, the "data scientist," to extract this gold from your data? Nope. Data science is little more than using straight-forward steps to process raw data into actionable insight. And in Data Smart, author and data scientist John Foreman will show you how that's done within the familiar environment of a spreadsheet."

    AI & Machine LearningData & StatisticsSystems & OS
    Open LibraryAmazon
    Stats for nerds
    20recommend
    26mentions
    22people
    2013–2026years
    85% recommend15% neutral

    Mentions per year

    20132015201720192021202320252026

    What Hacker News says

    1. eb0laSep 2026
      Data Smart, by John Foreman. Out of print, but you can get it from Abe Books: https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/data-smart-using-...

      Why it is cool?

      Because instead of R, Gadoop, Spark, Python, whatever... it started explaining data science with excel.

      The best part for me was optimization.

      thread
    2. sneha1995Jul 2023
      Which book has had the strongest effect on how you make products? And why?

      To be honest many books left an impression on me.

      Those that I found to be most interesting are:

      Paypal Wars by Eric M. Jackson

      Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill

      Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen

      Data Smart Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight by John W. Foreman

      can recommend a book Shoe dog describing a product-centric approach of Nike's founder and his belief in what he was selling. Build something you belive in and and would use yourself. If you will love it there's likely somebody else in the world you would find it irreplacable too.

      thread
    3. simmytotalJul 2021
      I recommend:

      "Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight":

      https://www.amazon.com/Data-Smart-Science-Transform-Informat...

      This will allow you to excel in Excel with data science.

      thread
    4. soaredFeb 2021
      Is there a book that teaches this by hand? My favorite book went through basic algorithms by hand in excel (data smart, john foreman)
      thread
    5. saadatqFeb 2021
      I recommend “Data Smart” to anyone who wants to break into data science.
      thread
    6. giardiniNov 2020
      As others have noted, many data scientists work in Excel. This book, which teaches data science, does just that:

      "Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight" by by John W. Foreman

      https://www.amazon.com/Data-Smart-Science-Transform-Informat...

      This is likely the quickest way to start.

      thread

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