Introduction

Data science and machine learning are in high demand, as customers are increasingly looking for ways to glean insights from their data.  More customers now realize that business intelligence is not enough as the volume, speed, and complexity of data now defy traditional analytics tools.   While business intelligence addresses descriptive and diagnostic analysis, data science unlocks new opportunities through predictive and prescriptive analysis.

This book provides an overview of data science and an in-depth view of Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, the latest predictive analytics service from the company. The book provides a structured approach to data science and practical guidance for solving real-world business problems such as buyer propensity modeling, customer churn analysis, predictive maintenance, and product recommendation. The simplicity of this new service from Microsoft will help to take data science and machine learning to a much broader audience than existing products in this space.  Learn how you can quickly build and deploy sophisticated predictive models as machine learning web services with the new Azure Machine Learning service from Microsoft.

Who Should Read this Book?

This book is for data scientists, business analysts, BI professionals, and developers.

The reader needs to have basic skills in statistics and data analysis. That said, they do not need to be data scientists or have deep data mining skills to benefit from this book.

What You Will Learn  

This book will provide the following:

• A deep background in data science, and how to solve a business data science problem using a structured approach and best practices
• How to use Microsoft Azure Machine Learning service to effectively build and deploy predictive models as machine learning web services
• Practical examples that show how to solve typical predictive analytics problems such as propensity modeling, churn analysis, and product recommendation.

At the end of the book, you will have gained essential skills in basic data science, the data mining process, and a clear understanding of the new Microsoft Azure Machine Learning service. You’ll also have the frameworks for solving practical business problems with machine learning.