A comprehensive textbook on data analysis for business, applied economics and public policy that uses case studies with real-world data.

Now in its third edition, this classic book is widely considered the leading text on Bayesian methods, lauded for its accessible, practical approach to analyzing data and solving research problems. Bayesian Data Analysis, Third Edition continues to take an applied approach to analysis using up-to-date Bayesian methods. The authors—all leaders in the statistics community—introduce basic concepts from a data-analytic perspective before presenting advanced methods. Throughout the text, numerous worked examples drawn from real applications and research emphasize the use of Bayesian inference in practice. New to the Third Edition Four new chapters on nonparametric modeling Coverage of weakly informative priors and boundary-avoiding priors Updated discussion of cross-validation and predictive information criteria Improved convergence monitoring and effective sample size calculations for iterative simulation Presentations of Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, variational Bayes, and expectation propagation New and revised software code The book can be used in three different ways. For undergraduate students, it introduces Bayesian inference starting from first principles. For graduate students, the text presents effective current approaches to Bayesian modeling and computation in statistics and related fields. For researchers, it provides an assortment of Bayesian methods in applied statistics. Additional materials, including data sets used in the examples, solutions to selected exercises, and software instructions, are available on the book’s web page.

Get complete instructions for manipulating, processing, cleaning, and crunching datasets in Python. Updated for Python 3.6, the second edition of this hands-on guide is packed with practical case studies that show you how to solve a broad set of data analysis problems effectively. You’ll learn the latest versions of pandas, NumPy, IPython, and Jupyter in the process. Written by Wes McKinney, the creator of the Python pandas project, this book is a practical, modern introduction to data science tools in Python. It’s ideal for analysts new to Python and for Python programmers new to data science and scientific computing. Data files and related material are available on GitHub. Use the IPython shell and Jupyter notebook for exploratory computing Learn basic and advanced features in NumPy (Numerical Python) Get started with data analysis tools in the pandas library Use flexible tools to load, clean, transform, merge, and reshape data Create informative visualizations with matplotlib Apply the pandas groupby facility to slice, dice, and summarize datasets Analyze and manipulate regular and irregular time series data Learn how to solve real-world data analysis problems with thorough, detailed examples

This book covers several of the statistical concepts and data analytic skills needed to succeed in data-driven life science research. The authors proceed from relatively basic concepts related to computed p-values to advanced topics related to analyzing highthroughput data. They include the R code that performs this analysis and connect the lines of code to the statistical and mathematical concepts explained.

A friendly and accessible approach to applying statistics in the real world With an emphasis on critical thinking, The Art of Data Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic Statistics presents fun and unique examples, guides readers through the entire data collection and analysis process, and introduces basic statistical concepts along the way. Leaving proofs and complicated mathematics behind, the author portrays the more engaging side of statistics and emphasizes its role as a problem-solving tool. In addition, light-hearted case studies illustrate the application of statistics to real data analyses, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of commonly used techniques. Written for the growing academic and industrial population that uses statistics in everyday life, The Art of Data Analysis: How to Answer Almost Any Question Using Basic Statistics highlights important issues that often arise when collecting and sifting through data. Featured concepts include: • Descriptive statistics • Analysis of variance • Probability and sample distributions • Confidence intervals • Hypothesis tests • Regression • Statistical correlation • Data collection • Statistical analysis with graphs Fun and inviting from beginning to end, The Art of Data Analysis is an ideal book for students as well as managers and researchers in industry, medicine, or government who face statistical questions and are in need of an intuitive understanding of basic statistical reasoning.

Introduction to Data Science: Data Analysis and Prediction Algorithms with R introduces concepts and skills that can help you tackle real-world data analysis challenges. It covers concepts from probability, statistical inference, linear regression, and machine learning. It also helps you develop skills such as R programming, data wrangling, data visualization, predictive algorithm building, file organization with UNIX/Linux shell, version control with Git and GitHub, and reproducible document preparation. This book is a textbook for a first course in data science. No previous knowledge of R is necessary, although some experience with programming may be helpful. The book is divided into six parts: R, data visualization, statistics with R, data wrangling, machine learning, and productivity tools. Each part has several chapters meant to be presented as one lecture. The author uses motivating case studies that realistically mimic a data scientist’s experience. He starts by asking specific questions and answers these through data analysis so concepts are learned as a means to answering the questions. Examples of the case studies included are: US murder rates by state, self-reported student heights, trends in world health and economics, the impact of vaccines on infectious disease rates, the financial crisis of 2007-2008, election forecasting, building a baseball team, image processing of hand-written digits, and movie recommendation systems. The statistical concepts used to answer the case study questions are only briefly introduced, so complementing with a probability and statistics textbook is highly recommended for in-depth understanding of these concepts. If you read and understand the chapters and complete the exercises, you will be prepared to learn the more advanced concepts and skills needed to become an expert.

"Data analysis has become a necessary skill across the social sciences, and recent advancements in computing power have made knowledge of programming an essential component. Yet most data science books are intimidating and overwhelming to a non-specialist audience, including most undergraduates. This book will be a shorter, more focused and accessible version of Kosuke Imai's Quantitative Social Science book, which was published by Princeton in 2018 and has been adopted widely in graduate level courses of the same title. This book uses the same innovative approach as Quantitative Social Science , using real data and 'R' to answer a wide range of social science questions. It assumes no prior knowledge of statistics or coding. It starts with straightforward, simple data analysis and culminates with multivariate linear regression models, focusing more on the intuition of how the math works rather than the math itself. The book makes extensive use of data visualizations, diagrams, pictures, cartoons, etc., to help students understand and recall complex concepts, provides an easy to follow, step-by-step template of how to conduct data analysis from beginning to end, and will be accompanied by supplemental materials in the appendix and online for both students and instructors"--