July 2009
Beginner to intermediate
384 pages
12h 56m
English
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Preface
WHEN WE WERE FIRST APPROACHED WITH THE IDEA OF A FOLLOW-UP TO BEAUTIFUL CODE, THIS TIME about data, we found the idea exciting and very ambitious. Collecting, visualizing, and processing data now touches every professional field and so many aspects of daily life that a great collection would have to be almost unreasonably broad in scope. So we contacted a highly diverse group of people whose work we admired, and were thrilled that so many agreed to contribute.
This book is the result, and we hope it captures just how wide-ranging (and beautiful) working with data can be. In it you'll learn about everything from fighting with governments to working with the Mars lander; you'll learn how to use statistics programs, make visualizations, and remix a Radiohead video; you'll see maps, DNA, and something we can only really call "data philosophy."
The royalties for this book are being donated to Creative Commons and the Sunlight Foundation, two organizations dedicated to making the world better by freeing data. We hope you'll consider how your own encounters with data shape the world.
How This Book Is Organized
The chapters in this book follow a loose arc from data collection through data storage, organization, retrieval, visualization, and finally, analysis.
Chapter 1, Seeing Your Life in Data, by Nathan Yau, looks at the motivations and challenges behind two projects in the emerging field of personal data collection.
Chapter 2, The Beautiful People: Keeping Users in Mind When Designing ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.