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18 Comments

Feedback for the book "Getting Started with Data"

Hello, Indies,

We recently finished writing a 250-page book about the foundations of data. This is not an advanced book talking about data. Instead, it's intended to be the first reading for people looking to start understanding more about data and/or start a data-related career.

Here is the PDF of the unedited version of the book:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/os1o8zbpyb9ksb9/getting-started-with-data-preview.pdf?dl=0

Please, could you guys take a quick look at the book's structure/content and provide some feedback?

Important - This is a social-focused initiative

This book was written by the members of Simbiose Ventures, a Brazilian organization focused on providing a better future for low-income Brazilians by teaching them how to code and create data-related products, from which we get the necessary revenue to maintain the initiative alive.

Your decision to give feedback about this book has contributed to the members' success, as 100% of the revenue from this book goes straight to supporting their journey.

Book Overview

The main target/persona for this book is:
People from 18 to 50, daily working on computers, with no deep technical background (maybe some superficial knowledge of spreadsheets).

We don't want this book to look complex or exclusive to technical people. This book should be readable by any "regular" person that wants to understand more about data.

What to expect?

  • After reading this book, you can expect to understand the main concepts and technical details related to data.

  • You will be able to recognize and understand most of the jargon used by data-related products and professionals.

  • You will certainly be able to talk to other people about data and some of its possible usages.

What this book is not?

  • This book has no intention to make you a “data engineer”, “data scientist”, “data analyst”, “business intelligence professional” and so on. The sole purpose of this book is to help you get started with data in a structured way.

  • If you already have a firm grasp of the basics and expect to be able to run an incredible analysis or create an entire data infrastructure by reading this book, don’t waste your time, there are much better books and resources for that, as we detail in section 8.4 (A Learning Path).

  • Even so, if you really plan to start a data-related career, we humbly believe this book might be a good first step, as many of the other books presume you already have some minimum knowledge about data.

Why we wrote this book

Since 2012, we have had to teach dozens of new team members at Simbiose Ventures about concepts related to data every few months. This training covered data and everything else associated with it, such as databases, data engineering, data analysis, and so on.

Before deciding to write this book, our training process looked like a patchwork: hundreds of small pieces from books, articles, and courses that talked about data. When onboarding new members, we had to drown them in information because we never found a single, concrete source to get them from "zero to hero" in understanding data. This usually brought 2 challenges:

  1. It scares people off, because there is a lot to study, even before actually starting to work;

  2. It's not efficient, as we have to assemble different study tracks for different people when they are not going to perform similar roles.

This changed when a specific talented, anxious, and eager girl joined our team. We gave her the mission of studying all the materials we had and create a single book that could introduce all the concepts about data to any new Simbiose member. The result of all this work is the "Getting Started with Data" book.

In this book, we aim to present the data world for those who are interested in its importance but not sure about where to start. Going from parts of history, the importance of data, and how it revolutionized our way of managing and calculating, to how technology managed to elevate the possibilities of our work.

  1. 3

    My feedback is to not mass tag dozens of people. It feels pushy and spammy.

    1. 1

      Thanks so much for the honest feedback @PaoloAmoroso. The idea was not to spam, obviously, but just to tag the correct people that could help and probably wouldn't see the post.

      Anyway, lesson learned that some people might see this action as a bad thing.

  2. 2

    Since I'm tagged (and since my books do about 15k/month in royalties and growing), my advice is basically to treat the book as a problem-solving product instead of a book: talk to your future readers, help solve their problems, iterate on the table of contents, aggressively use beta readers on early drafts, iterate again using a mix of qualitative and quantitative feedback, etc.

    Publish once the data supports that you've built something that people love to read and can't help but talk about. If it's useful, I put my whole view on this (30k words) in writeusefulbooks.com and we've also got a little community of a few dozen nonfiction authors helping each other out.

    In any case, I wish you the best with it. Writing a book is a super exciting project and congrats for getting this far.

    1. 1

      Hi @robfitz , thanks so the amazing feedback! :-)

      Makes a lot of sense. I will definitely read your book.

      Wish you all the best too.

    1. 1

      Hi @Gmenegatti,

      My advice: get a technical reviewer to provide you with detailed feedback. The reviewer could be a colleague, a peer, or someone in your target audience. And compensate them for their time. Best of luck!

      1. 1

        Hello @radiomorillo , thanks so much for your reply and feedback.

        This book was already reviewed by a few independent technical professionals that attested to the correctness of the text and concepts. :-)

        1. 1

          Awesome, that's great to hear!

  3. 1

    Hello, @baiaman @elom @matthew_giesa @kiani @csotherden @Subro @dteg @Seth_Fannin @Romstar @net2tim @jeffsvicarovich

    You are all part of the "All Things Analytics" group at IH, so I humbly thought this might interest you and also gently request your feedback about the book structure/content.

    Please, would you mind helping us?

    1. 1

      @Gmenegatti I just did a cursory review of the book and its topics. It covers the basics. But IMHO data being such a hyped topic for past few years, there are plenty of books that address the very same segment that this book targets (which is basics of data analysis for business). If you could target a very specific segment with this probably would have gotten more attention. Like data analysis for digital business or for financial business etc. ATB with the book.

      1. 1

        Thanks so much for your reply and feedback @Subro .

        Please, would you mind giving one (or few) examples of the books you believe cover the same kind of content?

        I'm asking it because we made some research and didn't find any. Obviously, there are many books describing de same concepts, but most (if not all) of them are very technical and not for beginners, they normally presume you already know something about data.

        1. 1

          Data Analytics: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide by Benjamin Smith comes to my mind. I just googled and found- Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Data Science: A Managerial Perspective by Ramesh Sharda. They may not be 100% match to yours but you get my point.

          1. 1

            Hi @Subro , thanks so much for the books. In fact, their intentions and contents are somewhat similar, but on my point of view they focus on "how to use data" and we try to focus as much as possible on data lifecycle, such as "what is data", "what is information", "where data comes from", etc.

            In our experience, understanding analytics is very important and indeed exciting, but going straight to analytics without having a minimal solid foundation can be very dangerous and challenging.

            But I agree, we need to make our point of view much more clear.

  4. 1

    Hello, @wizk @Berka @RapidFireFeedback @cesario26 @SeanLikesData @Rhazlett @UnscalableActs

    You are all part of the Data Visualization group at IH, so I humbly thought this might interest you and also gently request your feedback about the book structure/content.

    Please, can you help us?

  5. 1

    Hello, @spike_joestar @tabbydotus @alexnakagawa @abdullahsahin @nklsw @rsohlot @AdamFisher @maximgeller @mpop @artiagarwal @anita_kirkovska @urinive @Casey_Botticello @baryo @juju_bongobongo @kinder @TimothyD @miawolf @Maxdata @gtardini @MrMaksim @Woody888 @ditData @blakerson @nosecroquet @rasulkireev @squillink

    You are all part of the Data group at IH, so I humbly thought this might interest you and also gently request your feedback about the book structure/content.

    Please, can I count on you?

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing the book.

      I graduated with an Econ and Math degree and worked as a Data Analyst and an Actuary. I should be very good with data, but I'm not really. The problem is that I never had good introduction. Hopefully this book will be a good introduction. Will give it a read when I have the time.

      1. 1

        Thanks for the insight @rasulkireev. This is exactly the "use case"/problem we are looking for to solve.

        I will anxiously wait for your feedback. :-)

        Thanks so much.

  6. 1

    Hello @bastosmichael, I saw your post on IH looking for a co-founder and noticed that you are a data engineer. I would love if we could get your opinion about this book. :-)

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