The holidays are nearing, and you may have a person with a quantitative bent on your gift list. Perhaps that person is an analyst, engineer, scientist or statistician who works in an organization that is ramping up its analytic efforts.
Well, here's help with your holiday shopping! It's a list of books that your favorite analytically minded person would likely enjoy.
This has been on my mind because I am often asked about ways to overcome challenges to data-driven decision making in organizations — typically, these challenges are related to people changing behaviors and doing things differently. Every organization will have its own cultural make-up, but getting people to try new things (and expecting some failures) is not easy.
These books will inspire and share some very interesting perspectives on experimentation, influence, cognitive bias and ways to make better decisions:
Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim Harford
The Value of Business Analytics: Identifying the Path to Profitability, Evan Stubbs
Pulse: Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities, Douglass W. Hubbard
The Failure of Risk Management, Douglass W. Hubbard
How to Measure Anything, Douglass W. Hubbard
Business Analytics for Managers, Gert Laursen and Jesper Thorlund
The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics, Thornton May
How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
Outliers: the Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell
Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell
Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, Kerry Patterson et al.
The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris
Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results, Thomas Davenport et al.
Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do, Kaiser Fung
Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis, Stephen Few
Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten, Stephen Few
Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data, Stephen Few
The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big In Business, Jeffrey Ma
The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, David Salsburg
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, Dan Ariely
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, Dan Ariely
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart, Ian Ayres
The Numerati, Stephen Baker
Business Intelligence Success Factors: Tools for Aligning Your Business in the Global Economy, Olivia Par Rudd
Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions, James Taylor and Neil Raden
Decision Management Systems: A Practical Guide to Using Business Rules and Predictive Analytics, James Taylor
For more on methods and approaches:
Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications, Robert Nisbet, John Elder and Gary Miner
Credit Risk Management: Basic Concepts, Bart Baesens and Tony van Gestel
Data Mining Techniques: For Marketing, Sales, and Customer Relationship Management, Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff
Principles of Data Mining, David Hand et al.
Several of these are also are recommended on the International Institute for Analytics website.
