Data Analytics with Hadoop: An Introduction for Data Scientists

by Benjamin Bengfort, Jenny Kim

Ready to use statistical and machine-learning techniques across large data sets? This practical guide shows you why the Hadoop ecosystem is perfect for the job. Instead of deployment, operations, or software development usually associated with distributed computing, youâ??ll focus on particular analyses you can build, the data warehousing techniques that Hadoop provides, and higher order data workflows this framework can produce. Data scientists and analysts will learn how to perform a wide range of techniques, from writing MapReduce and Spark applications with Python to using advanced modeling and data management with Spark MLlib, Hive, and HBase. Youâ??ll also learn about the analytical processes and data systems available to build and empower data products that can handleâ??and actually requireâ??huge amounts of data.

Genres: Technology

288 pages, Paperback

Published July 12, 2016

About the author

Benjamin Bengfort is an experienced data scientist and Python developer who has worked in military, industry, and academia for the past 8 years. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, doing research in Metacognition and Natural Language Processing. He holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from North Dakota State University, where he taught undergraduate Computer Science courses. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University, where he teaches Data Science and Analytics. Benjamin has been involved in two data science start-ups in the DC region: leveraging large-scale machine learning and Big Data techniques across a variety of applications. He has a deep appreciation for the combination of models and data for entrepreneurial effect, and he is currently building one of these start-ups into a more mature organization.

Reviews

[Kostas Xirog · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book. It is a great overview of a plethora of topics around doing scalable data analytics and data science. It is extremely up-to date, going through techniques that have existed for many years now like MapReduce, but also newer systems like Spark, all in the context of the Hadoop eco-system. They go into machine learning techniques, data management, and overall paint a nice picture around what data science is, and why data products are important, while teaching you how to make them!

Every single concept is explained in a clear and concise manner, and wherever details are omitted there is always a citation to a source where the reader can continue reading more about it, which I think is great. Although I wouldn’t classify myself as a beginner, I believe it is friendly to both professionals and beginners, as it is centered around python which makes most examples (that are conveniently uploaded in a nice github repository) really easy to simply run and play around with. After describing something, whether that would be a technique for data analysis, or just the in-and outer workings of some analysis platform like HBase, Hive etc, the authors provide examples so that while you’re reading about this stuff you can also run it, play around with it and really explore how these systems function; I believe this is a crucial part of familiarizing ones’ self with new platforms.

Another thing I enjoyed a lot was the ending of this book. After you really dive into all of these systems and get your feet wet with each one of them, the authors wrap it all up in a nice bow by taking a step back and describing the entire end-to-end process of how you would go about productively using the knowledge you’ve gotten from this book to build data analytics workflows!
I highly recommend this to anyone who both knows that they want to learn how to deploy scalable analytics workflows in 2016, but also to readers who are simply just curious about data science; this book will suck you in!

[Siva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good intro! Pretty broad.

[Delhi Irc]

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