Big Data Demystified: How to use big data, data science and AI to make better business decisions and gain competitive advantage, reviewed

By @SimonCocking, review of Big Data Demystified: How to use big data, data science and AI to make better business decisions and gain competitive advantage. Available from Amazon here.

“Big Data” is one of the major business buzzwords of the last decade. Lots of businesses have jumped on the trend, investing in powerful software and data science expertise to make use of the wealth of data that is available. What’s more, big data has provided the crucial foundation for the recent advances in applied data science and the remarkable breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence.

Big Data Demystified is the practical new guide for people who want to get ahead in business by using big data, AI and data science. It bridges the gap between data scientists and decision makers, demystifying the technical jargon to allow even technophobe business leaders to make better decisions and gain a competitive advantage from data.

This is a useful entry level book, for those who need to grab a quick primer into what all the hype is about. It is good as far as it goes. Then again maybe it makes sense as a good quick pitch into these topics and areas. We saw it in several airport book shops, and read it ourselves on one cross European flight, which makes sense.

As always with successful books they include relevant and insightful case studies, and this book does this well too.  Overall this is an area where potentially we could see a tsunami of changes coming fast, driven by falling prices for sensors, and self-learning AI algorithms. If this an area where you need a high level overview into trends to watch, and relevant applications to your own business then this is good primer and starting point for you.

About the author: David Stephenson PhD is an internationally recognised expert and frequent keynote speaker in the fields of data science and big data analytics. He has formed and led global analytics programmes within US and European companies including eBay and Axel Springer.

He has been a consultant on additional data projects for a range of companies and has worked in a broad assortment of sectors, including e-commerce, capital markets, insurance, travel & tourism, risk-management, and online publishing. He has been an expert advisor to top-tier investment, private equity and management consulting firms.

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