Keeping up with the Quants

Keeping up with the quants

‘ We live in a world awash with data.’ As the first sentence of the book says, we talk about so-called big data everyday but sometimes we are not really sure about what big data is and how to use and analyze it. This book, in general, describes the meaning and implement of analytics according to examples in our life and business cases, which are relatively easy to understand for those without any education background of analytics before.

There are seven chapters in total. In the first chapter ‘Why Everyone Needs Analytical Skills’, the book mentions the importance of big data and the rise of analytics and big data. Readers will also clarify what analytics are according to systematic explanations. Analytics can be classified as descriptive, predictive, or prescriptive according to their methods and purpose, and could also be clarified as qualitative and quantitative according to the process employed and the type of data that are collected and analyzed. In this book, our topic focuses on quantitative analytics which is the systematic empirical investigation of phenomena via statistical. After understanding the significance of analytics, the first chapter also explains the specific meaning of the term, big data. One of the advantages of the book is that the writer is always trying to use a simple case related to our life, which will make an abstract noun more definite. In addition, the writer is willing to tell readers at the beginning of the book what they can get from this book so that they could evaluate whether it is worth reading and if they are suitable readers for this book. Additionally, the most important content in this part is to clarify the final aim of analytics, decision making. In order to make readers use it better, the book lists almost all types of business decisions that can be made analytically.

Chapter one also gives a brief summary of the whole book and the major content of following chapters. Actually, the core of this book describes three major states of analytical thinking, which are Framing the problem, Solving the problem and Results presentation and action. Chapter two, three and four are devoted to these three topics with some business cases of analytical work when making decisions. Chapter two describes the first stage of quantitative analysis with two steps, problem recognition and review of previous findings. The beginning of everything is to recognize a problem or a decision that needs to be solved, which is called framing. The most important two things during this step are identifying the stakeholders for the analytics and confirming the specific decision. At the same time, you should also check whether similar research and findings existed by searching the previous materials again and again. In this way, you could found a potential model or approach to solve the problem and avoid revising other factors related to your decisions making.