Keeping Up With The Quants

A renowned thought-leader and a professor of statistics team up to provide the essential tools for enhancing thinking and decision-making in today's workplace in order to be more competitive and successful. 25,000 first printing.

Why Everyone Needs Analytical Skills Welcome to the age of data. No matter your interests (sports, movies, politics), your industry (finance, marketing, technology, manufacturing), or the type of organization you work for (big company, nonprofit, small start-up)—your world is awash with data. As a successful manager today, you must be able to make sense of all this information. You need to be conversant with analytical terminology and methods and able to work with quantitative information. This book promises to become your “quantitative literacy" guide—helping you develop the analytical skills you need right now in order to summarize data, find the meaning in it, and extract its value. In Keeping Up with the Quants, authors, professors, and analytics experts Thomas Davenport and Jinho Kim offer practical tools to improve your understanding of data analytics and enhance your thinking and decision making. You’ll gain crucial skills, including: • How to formulate a hypothesis • How to gather and analyze relevant data • How to interpret and communicate analytical results • How to develop habits of quantitative thinking • How to deal effectively with the “quants” in your organization Big data and the analytics based on it promise to change virtually every industry and business function over the next decade. If you don’t have a business degree or if you aren’t comfortable with statistics and quantitative methods, this book is for you. Keeping Up with the Quants will give you the skills you need to master this new challenge—and gain a significant competitive edge.

The Analytics and Big Data collection offers a “greatest hits” digital compilation of ideas from world-renowned thought leader Thomas Davenport, who helped popularize the terms analytics and big data in the workplace. An agile and prolific thinker, Davenport has written or coauthored more than a dozen bestselling books. Several of these titles are offered together for the first time in this curated digital bundle, including: Big Data at Work, Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work, and Keeping Up with the Quants. The collection also includes Davenport’s popular Harvard Business Review articles, “Data Scientist: The Sexiest Job of the 21st Century” (2012) and “Analytics 3.0” (2013). Combined, these works cover all the bases on analytics and big data: what each term means; the ramifications of each from a technical, consumer, and management perspective; and where each can have the biggest impact on your business. Whether you’re an executive, a manager, or a student wanting to learn more, Analytics and Big Data is the most comprehensive collection you’ll find on the ever-growing phenomenon of digital data and analysis—and how you can make this rising business trend work for you. Named one of the ten “Masters of the New Economy” by CIO magazine, Thomas Davenport has helped hundreds of companies revitalize their management practices. He combines his interests in research, teaching, and business management as the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology & Management at Babson College. Davenport has also taught at Harvard Business School, the University of Chicago, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, and the University of Texas at Austin and has directed research centers at Accenture, McKinsey & Company, Ernst & Young, and CSC. He is also an independent Senior Advisor to Deloitte Analytics.

The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals is a comprehensive resource for readers with a background in science and technology who want to transfer their skills to the financial industry. It is written in a clear, conversational style and requires no prior knowledge of either finance or financial analytics. The book begins by discussing the operation of the financial industry and the business models of different types of Wall Street firms, as well as the job roles those with technical backgrounds can fill in those firms. Then it describes the mechanics of how these firms make money trading the main financial markets (focusing on fixed income, but also covering equity, options and derivatives markets), and highlights the ways in which quantitative professionals can participate in this money-making process. The second half focuses on the main areas of Wall Street technology and explains how financial models and systems are created, implemented, and used in real life. This is one of the few books that offers a review of relevant literature and Internet resources.