About the Author

Russell Jurney cut his data teeth in casino gaming, building web apps to analyze the performance of slot machines in the US and Mexico. After dabbling in entrepreneurship, interactive media and journalism, he moved to silicon valley to build analytics applications at scale at Ning and LinkedIn. He lives on the ocean in Pacifica, California with his wife Kate and two fuzzy dogs.

Mining data requires a deep investment in people and time. How can you be sure you're building the right models? What tools help you connect with the customer's needs? With this hands-on book, you'll learn a flexible toolset and methodology for building effective analytics applications. Agile Data shows you how to create an environment for exploring data, using lightweight tools such as Ruby, Python, Apache Pig, and the D3.js (Data-Driven Documents) JavaScript library. You'll learn an iterative approach that allows you to quickly change the kind of analysis you're doing, as you discover what the data is telling you. All the example code in this book is available as working Heroku apps. Build an application to mine your own email inbox Use several data structures to extract multiple features from a single dataset, and learn how different perspectives can yield insight Rapidly boot your applications as simple front-ends to key/value stores Add features driven by descriptive and inferential statistics, machine learning, and data visualization Gather usage data and talk to real users to help guide your data-driven exploration You can provide constructive comments on the manuscript through O'Reilly's Open Feedback Publishing System (OFPS). Learn more at http://labs.oreilly.com/ofps.html.