Aleksa's Book Review: Predictive Analytics, Data Mining & Big Data

When I first arrived in San Francisco many a moon ago, my trip from the airport was met with a plethora of billboards advertising various "Big Data & Mining" businesses. At the time, I thought nothing of it, attributing the "Big Data" to server farms and "Mining" to cryptocurrency mining, which I smugly disregarded as a somewhat early entrant into the bull market of 2017. However, I should've paid more attention.

Big Data is one of the most important developments in marketing in the previous 15 years, and I don't think it's going away any time soon. This book goes into the design of a big data strategy for government, B2B and B2C alike. I was shocked by the potable nature of something that I had assumed was a dismal field for the savant autists of the world - the book explains clearly and concisely what big data is and is not, and where it should and shouldn't be used.

The actual design and application of a big data system in the pursuit of a business goal is explained in the latter half of the book - which stole my breath. I hadn't known it was that easy to design a big data system (in theory at least - I struggle even with video editing) and how the results that it can bring about are tantamount to cheating.

In closing, this is definitely a solid book to read on Big Data - for introductory purposes, if not for implementation and detailed design. Merely understanding that acquiring a specific type of lead can be done with specific sets of data is instrumental to further learning, and I commend this book on being an excellent primer for my journey into this field.
9/10