Intro -- Praise for Analytics: The Agile Way -- Analytics -- Wiley & SAS Business Series -- Other Books by Phil Simon -- Contents -- Preface: The Power of Dynamic Data -- Figures and Tables -- Introduction: It Didn't Used to Be This Way -- A Little History Lesson -- Analytics and the Need for Speed -- How Fast Is Fast Enough? -- Automation: Still the Exception That Proves the Rule -- Book Scope, Approach, and Style -- Breadth over Depth -- Methodology: Guidelines > Rules -- Technical Sophistication -- Vendor Agnosticism -- Intended Audience -- Plan of Attack -- Next -- Notes -- Part ONE Background and Trends -- Chapter 1: Signs of the Times: Why Data and Analytics Are Dominating Our World -- The Moneyball Effect -- Digitization and the Great Unbundling -- Amazon Web Services and Cloud Computing -- Not Your Father's Data Storage -- How? Hadoop and the Growth of NoSQL -- How Much? Kryder's Law -- Moore's Law -- The Smartphone Revolution -- The Democratization of Data -- The Primacy of Privacy -- The Internet of Things -- The Rise of the Data-Savvy Employee -- The Burgeoning Importance of Data Analytics -- A Watershed Moment -- Common Ground -- The Data Business Is Alive and Well and Flourishing -- Not Just the Big Five -- Data-Related Challenges -- Companies Left Behind -- The Growth of Analytics Programs -- Next -- Notes -- Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Contemporary Data: A Primer on What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It -- Types of Data -- Structured -- Semistructured -- Unstructured -- Metadata -- Getting the Data -- Generating Data -- Buying Data -- Data in Motion -- Next -- Notes -- Chapter 3: The Fundamentals of Analytics: Peeling Back the Onion -- Defining Analytics -- Reporting ≠ Analytics -- Types of Analytics -- Descriptive Analytics -- Predictive Analytics -- Prescriptive Analytics -- Streaming Data Revisited.
