Product Analytics: Applied Data Science Techniques for Actionable Con

I’m very happy someone finally wrote a book on product analytics. This is a model everyone analyst should strive for. Though I do believe there is a huge gap between the current way product analytics is done from the descriptive inferential way to the model put forth in this book and that mostly comes down to lack of time and statistical know-how. Nearly none of my clients would allow us the time needed to do the necessary statistics.The only negative response I have, (and reason for taking away one star) is the repeated grammatical/spelling errors. It takes a very educated person and makes them seem like they are not paying attention to detail, which is incongruous with the content of the book. The publisher really needs a better editor/proof-reader.

As a behavioral scientist and data analyst transitioning into product analytics, this is the best book I have read so far.Product analytics literature often overlooks the importance of conceptual work, and therefore, can lack substance. This one doesn’t.This book also brings academic lingo and best practices in social science research in a digestible way.To top it off, the book offers novel real life applications, such as developing machine learning algorithms using R.All in all, a great book for companies seeking to establish a product analytics practice or researchers seeking to elevate their skills.

This book is absolutely riddled with typos, but it goes beyond that. Time and again the author is straight up wrong when it comes to the definitions of key terms (skew and kurtosis for example), explanation of theory, and the math itself. It reminded me of reading a book report written by someone who had only read the the book’s wikipedia entry.I recommend you get anything but this book. This book will leave you misinformed and your time wasted. Take a look at the table of contents and then look online, there are a lot of good resources available.I gave it two stars rather than one for two reasons: 1) People tend to ignore one star reviews 2) While it poorly explains most concepts, it at least mentions concepts that are important. You could use it’s table of contents as a helpful list of things to learn, just don’t learn them from this book!

Excellent book on the foundation of product analytics.. wish the font were a little bigger though..