Holiday book gift ideas for the analytically minded

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The gift-giving season is approaching, and it’s time to start thinking about the quantitatively inclined people on your list. A few years ago, I wrote a post offering a list of books. Many new analytical books have been published since then, and there are some classics worth revisiting. So I wanted to list some more recent books and make sure you know about the recommended reading page of the Analytically Speaking webcast series (now in its third year). Many thought leaders from this webcast series — several of whom are authors — share books they recommend, and we continually update that reading list.

The first three books on my list below are from three of our featured keynotes at Discovery Summit this past September. You can view the plenary talks for David Hand and Michael Schrage to get a sense of what their recent books cover. The recording of the speech by Jonah Berger will air in January.

For those interested in analytical concepts — “listening for the melody” versus making the music:

The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day, David J. Hand

The Innovator's Hypothesis: How Cheap Experiments Are Worth More than Good Ideas, Michael Schrage

Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Jonah Berger

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Jordan Ellenberg

The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarin..., Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves, Dan Ariely

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don't, Nate Silver

Business Transformation: A Roadmap for Maximizing Organizational Insights, Aiman Zeid

Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasure of Uncertainty, Herbert Weisberg

How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business (3^rd Edition), Douglas W. Hubbard

Data Science for Business: What you need to know about data mining and data-analytic thinking, Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett

Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics, Thomas H. Davenport and Jinho Kim

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die, Eric Siegel

For those seeking more recent views on data visualization:

Medical Illuminations: Using Evidence, Visualization and Statistical Thinking to Improve Healthcare, Howard Wainer

The Visual Organization:  Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions, Phil Simon (he is working on a new book due out Feb. 15)

The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization (Voices That Matter), Alberto Cairo

For big data enthusiasts:

Numbersense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage, Kaiser Fung

Big Data, Data Mining, and Machine Learning: Value Creation for Business Leaders and Practitioners, Jared Dean

Analytics in a Big Data World: The Essential Guide to Data Science and its Applications, Bart Baesens

Big Data, Mining, and Analytics: Components of Strategic Decision Making, Stephen Kudyba

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking), Christian Rudder

Big Data, Big Innovation: Enabling Competitive Differentiation through Business Analytics, Evan Stubbs

Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities, Thomas H. Davenport

And for those who enjoy books on methods, techniques and more focused topics:

Statistics

 Elements of Statistical Learning (2nd Edition), Trevor Hastie et al.

Large-Scale Inference: Empirical Bayes Methods for Estimation, Testing, and Prediction, Bradley Efron

Analysis of Messy Data Volume I:  Designed Experiments, George A. Milliken and Dallas E. Johnson

Analysis of Messy Data, Volume II: Nonreplicated Experiments, George A. Milliken and Dallas E. Johnson

Analysis of Messy Data, Volume III: Analysis of Covariance, George A. Milliken and Dallas E. Johnson

Intro Stats (4th Edition), Richard D. De Veaux et al.

Business Statistics (3rd Edition), Norean D. Sharpe et al.

Bayesian Data Analysis, (3rd Edition), Andrew Gelman et al.

Statistics: Learning from Data, Roxy Peck

Statistics for Business: Decision Making and Analysis (2nd Edition), Robert A. Stine and Dean P. Foster

Modern Industrial Statistics: with applications in R, MINITAB and JMP, (2nd Edition), Ron Kenett and Shelemyahu Zacks

Statistical Intervals: A Guide for Practitioners, Gerald Hahn and William Q. Meeker

Discovering Partial Least Squares with JMP, Ian Cox and Marie Goddard

Predictive modeling and data mining

A Practical Guide to Data Mining for Business and Industry, Andrea Ahlmeyer-Stubbe et al.

Fundamentals of Predictive Analytics with JMP, Ron Klimberg and Bruce McCullough

Applied Predictive Analytics: Principles and Techniques for the Professional Data Analyst, Dean Abbott

Predictive Modeling and Analytics, Jeffrey Strickland

R for Business Analytics, Ajay Ohri

Applied Predictive Modeling, Max Kuhn and Kjell Johnson

Design of experiments

Design and Analysis of Experiments, Douglas C. Montgomery

Design and Analysis of Experiments by Douglas Montgomery: A Supplement for Using JMP, Heath Rushing et al.

Optimal Design of Experiments: A Case Study Approach, Peter Goos and Brad Jones

Quality and reliability

Statistical Thinking: Improving Business Performance, Roger Hoerl and Ron Snee

Statistical Methods for Reliability Data, Bill Meeker and Luis Escobar

Applied Reliability, Third Edition, Paul A. Tobias and David Trindade

Grab bag

 JMP Essentials: An Illustrated Step-by-Step Guide for New Users (2nd Edition), Curt Hinrichs and Chuck Boiler

Risk-Based Monitoring and Fraud Detection in Clinical Trials Using JMP and SAS, Richard Zink

Why We See What We Do Redux: A Wholly Empirical Theory of Vision, Dale Purves and Beau Lotto

The MicroGuide to Process and Decision Modeling in BPMN/DMN: Building More Effective Processes by In..., Tom Debevoise et al.

Brain Rules (Updated and Expanded): 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and Scho..., John Medina

Among the holiday catalogs (arriving since October) was a book catalog with an appropriate plaque: “Life is short. Read fast.”  If you have some books you’d like to suggest, leave me a comment. Happy reading!