Predictive Analytics Using R

Master the art of predictive modeling About This Book Load, wrangle, and analyze your data using the world's most powerful statistical programming language Familiarize yourself with the most common data mining tools of R, such as k-means, hierarchical regression, linear regression, Naive Bayes, decision trees, text mining and so on. We emphasize important concepts, such as the bias-variance trade-off and over-fitting, which are pervasive in predictive modeling Who This Book Is For If you work with data and want to become an expert in predictive analysis and modeling, then this Learning Path will serve you well. It is intended for budding and seasoned practitioners of predictive modeling alike. You should have basic knowledge of the use of R, although it's not necessary to put this Learning Path to great use. What You Will Learn Get to know the basics of R's syntax and major data structures Write functions, load data, and install packages Use different data sources in R and know how to interface with databases, and request and load JSON and XML Identify the challenges and apply your knowledge about data analysis in R to imperfect real-world data Predict the future with reasonably simple algorithms Understand key data visualization and predictive analytic skills using R Understand the language of models and the predictive modeling process In Detail Predictive analytics is a field that uses data to build models that predict a future outcome of interest. It can be applied to a range of business strategies and has been a key player in search advertising and recommendation engines. The power and domain-specificity of R allows the user to express complex analytics easily, quickly, and succinctly. R offers a free and open source environment that is perfect for both learning and deploying predictive modeling solutions in the real world. This Learning Path will provide you with all the steps you need to master the art of predictive modeling with R. We start with an introduction to data analysis with R, and then gradually you'll get your feet wet with predictive modeling. You will get to grips with the fundamentals of applied statistics and build on this knowledge to perform sophisticated and powerful analytics. You will be able to solve the difficulties relating to performing data analysis in practice and find solutions to working with “messy data”, large data, communicating results, and facilitating reproducibility. You will then perform key predictive analytics tasks using R, such as train and test predictive models for classification and regression tasks, score new data sets and so on. By the end of this Learning Path, you will have explored and tested the most popular modeling techniques in use on real-world data sets and mastered a diverse range of techniques in predictive analytics. This Learning Path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Data Analysis with R, Tony Fischetti Learning Predictive Analytics with R, Eric Mayor Mastering Predictive Analytics with R, Rui Miguel Forte Style and approach Learn data analysis using engaging examples and fun exercises, and with a gentle and friendly but comprehensive "learn-by-doing" approach. This is a practical course, which analyzes compelling data about life, health, and death with the help of tutorials. It offers you a useful way of interpreting the data that's specific to this course, but that can also be applied to any other data. This course is designed to be both a guide and a reference for moving beyond the basics of predictive modeling.

This book is about predictive analytics. Yet, each chapter could easily be handled by an entire volume of its own. So one might think of this a survey of predictive modeling. A predictive model is a statistical model or machine learning model used to predict future behavior based on past behavior. In order to use this book, one should have a basic understanding of mathematical statistics - it is an advanced book. Some theoretical foundations are laid out but not proven, but references are provided for additional coverage. Every chapter culminates in an example using R. R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. You may download R, from a preferred CRAN mirror at http: //www.r-project.org/. The book is organized so that statistical models are presented first (hopefully in a logical order), followed by machine learning models, and then applications: uplift modeling and time series. One could use this a textbook with problem solving in R-but there are no "by-hand" exercises.

Provides a foundation in classical parametric methods of regression and classification essential for pursuing advanced topics in predictive analytics and statistical learning This book covers a broad range of topics in parametric regression and classification including multiple regression, logistic regression (binary and multinomial), discriminant analysis, Bayesian classification, generalized linear models and Cox regression for survival data. The book also gives brief introductions to some modern computer-intensive methods such as classification and regression trees (CART), neural networks and support vector machines. The book is organized so that it can be used by both advanced undergraduate or masters students with applied interests and by doctoral students who also want to learn the underlying theory. This is done by devoting the main body of the text of each chapter with basic statistical methodology illustrated by real data examples. Derivations, proofs and extensions are relegated to the Technical Notes section of each chapter, Exercises are also divided into theoretical and applied. Answers to selected exercises are provided. A solution manual is available to instructors who adopt the text. Data sets of moderate to large sizes are used in examples and exercises. They come from a variety of disciplines including business (finance, marketing and sales), economics, education, engineering and sciences (biological, health, physical and social). All data sets are available at the book’s web site. Open source software R is used for all data analyses. R codes and outputs are provided for most examples. R codes are also available at the book’s web site. Predictive Analytics: Parametric Models for Regression and Classification Using R is ideal for a one-semester upper-level undergraduate and/or beginning level graduate course in regression for students in business, economics, finance, marketing, engineering, and computer science. It is also an excellent resource for practitioners in these fields.

To succeed with predictive analytics, you must understand it on three levels: Strategy and management Methods and models Technology and code This up-to-the-minute reference thoroughly covers all three categories. Now fully updated, this uniquely accessible book will help you use predictive analytics to solve real business problems and drive real competitive advantage. If you’re new to the discipline, it will give you the strong foundation you need to get accurate, actionable results. If you’re already a modeler, programmer, or manager, it will teach you crucial skills you don’t yet have. Unlike competitive books, this guide illuminates the discipline through realistic vignettes and intuitive data visualizations–not complex math. Thomas W. Miller, leader of Northwestern University’s pioneering program in predictive analytics, guides you through defining problems, identifying data, crafting and optimizing models, writing effective R code, interpreting results, and more. Every chapter focuses on one of today’s key applications for predictive analytics, delivering skills and knowledge to put models to work–and maximize their value. Reflecting extensive student and instructor feedback, this edition adds five classroom-tested case studies, updates all code for new versions of R, explains code behavior more clearly and completely, and covers modern data science methods even more effectively. All data sets, extensive R code, and additional examples available for download at http://www.ftpress.com/miller If you want to make the most of predictive analytics, data science, and big data, this is the book for you. Thomas W. Miller’s unique balanced approach combines business context and quantitative tools, appealing to managers, analysts, programmers, and students alike. Miller addresses multiple business cases and challenges, including segmentation, brand positioning, product choice modeling, pricing research, finance, sports, text analytics, sentiment analysis, and social network analysis. He illuminates the use of cross-sectional data, time series, spatial, and spatio-temporal data. You’ll learn why each problem matters, what data are relevant, and how to explore the data you’ve identified. Miller guides you through conceptually modeling each data set with words and figures; and then modeling it again with realistic R programs that deliver actionable insights. You’ll walk through model construction, explanatory variable subset selection, and validation, mastering best practices for improving out-of-sample predictive performance. Throughout, Miller employs data visualization and statistical graphics to help you explore data, present models, and evaluate performance. This edition adds five new case studies, updates all code for the newest versions of R, adds more commenting to clarify how the code works, and offers a more detailed and up-to-date primer on data science methods. Gain powerful, actionable, profitable insights about: Advertising and promotion Consumer preference and choice Market baskets and related purchases Economic forecasting Operations management Unstructured text and language Customer sentiment Brand and price Sports team performance And much more

This textbook integrates important mathematical foundations, efficient computational algorithms, applied statistical inference techniques, and cutting-edge machine learning approaches to address a wide range of crucial biomedical informatics, health analytics applications, and decision science challenges. Each concept in the book includes a rigorous symbolic formulation coupled with computational algorithms and complete end-to-end pipeline protocols implemented as functional R electronic markdown notebooks. These workflows support active learning and demonstrate comprehensive data manipulations, interactive visualizations, and sophisticated analytics. The content includes open problems, state-of-the-art scientific knowledge, ethical integration of heterogeneous scientific tools, and procedures for systematic validation and dissemination of reproducible research findings. Complementary to the enormous challenges related to handling, interrogating, and understanding massive amounts of complex structured and unstructured data, there are unique opportunities that come with access to a wealth of feature-rich, high-dimensional, and time-varying information. The topics covered in Data Science and Predictive Analytics address specific knowledge gaps, resolve educational barriers, and mitigate workforce information-readiness and data science deficiencies. Specifically, it provides a transdisciplinary curriculum integrating core mathematical principles, modern computational methods, advanced data science techniques, model-based machine learning, model-free artificial intelligence, and innovative biomedical applications. The book’s fourteen chapters start with an introduction and progressively build foundational skills from visualization to linear modeling, dimensionality reduction, supervised classification, black-box machine learning techniques, qualitative learning methods, unsupervised clustering, model performance assessment, feature selection strategies, longitudinal data analytics, optimization, neural networks, and deep learning. The second edition of the book includes additional learning-based strategies utilizing generative adversarial networks, transfer learning, and synthetic data generation, as well as eight complementary electronic appendices. This textbook is suitable for formal didactic instructor-guided course education, as well as for individual or team-supported self-learning. The material is presented at the upper-division and graduate-level college courses and covers applied and interdisciplinary mathematics, contemporary learning-based data science techniques, computational algorithm development, optimization theory, statistical computing, and biomedical sciences. The analytical techniques and predictive scientific methods described in the book may be useful to a wide range of readers, formal and informal learners, college instructors, researchers, and engineers throughout the academy, industry, government, regulatory, funding, and policy agencies. The supporting book website provides many examples, datasets, functional scripts, complete electronic notebooks, extensive appendices, and additional materials.

Now, a leader of Northwestern University's prestigious analytics program presents a fully-integrated treatment of both the business and academic elements of marketing applications in predictive analytics. Writing for both managers and students, Thomas W. Miller explains essential concepts, principles, and theory in the context of real-world applications. Building on Miller's pioneering program, Marketing Data Science thoroughly addresses segmentation, target marketing, brand and product positioning, new product development, choice modeling, recommender systems, pricing research, retail site selection, demand estimation, sales forecasting, customer retention, and lifetime value analysis. Starting where Miller's widely-praised Modeling Techniques in Predictive Analytics left off, he integrates crucial information and insights that were previously segregated in texts on web analytics, network science, information technology, and programming. Coverage includes: The role of analytics in delivering effective messages on the web Understanding the web by understanding its hidden structures Being recognized on the web – and watching your own competitors Visualizing networks and understanding communities within them Measuring sentiment and making recommendations Leveraging key data science methods: databases/data preparation, classical/Bayesian statistics, regression/classification, machine learning, and text analytics Six complete case studies address exceptionally relevant issues such as: separating legitimate email from spam; identifying legally-relevant information for lawsuit discovery; gleaning insights from anonymous web surfing data, and more. This text's extensive set of web and network problems draw on rich public-domain data sources; many are accompanied by solutions in Python and/or R. Marketing Data Science will be an invaluable resource for all students, faculty, and professional marketers who want to use business analytics to improve marketing performance.

R offers a free and open source environment that is perfect for both learning and deploying predictive modeling solutions in the real world. With its constantly growing community and plethora of packages, R offers the functionality to deal with a truly vast array of problems. This book is designed to be both a guide and a reference for moving beyond the basics of predictive modeling. The book begins with a dedicated chapter on the language of models and the predictive modeling process. Each subsequent chapter tackles a particular type of model, such as neural networks, and focuses on the three important questions of how the model works, how to use R to train it, and how to measure and assess its performance using real world data sets. By the end of this book, you will have explored and tested the most popular modeling techniques in use on real world data sets and mastered a diverse range of techniques in predictive analytics.

Learn how to use R to turn raw data into insight, knowledge, and understanding. This book introduces you to R, RStudio, and the tidyverse, a collection of R packages designed to work together to make data science fast, fluent, and fun. Suitable for readers with no previous programming experience, R for Data Science is designed to get you doing data science as quickly as possible. Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. You'll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what you've learned along the way. You'll learn how to: Wrangle—transform your datasets into a form convenient for analysis Program—learn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and ease Explore—examine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test them Model—provide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "signals" in your dataset Communicate—learn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results