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Nov. 14, 2012 - PRLog -- In A Simple Introduction to DATA SCIENCE Noreen Burlingame and Lars Nielsen provide an elegant, concise introduction to all aspects of Data Science. The book addresses the various skills required, the key steps in the Data Science process, software technology related to the effective practice of Data Science, and the best rising academic programs for training in the field.

In 2012, ninety-seven percent of North Carolina State's Master of Science in Analytics (MSA) graduates received one or more offers of employment before graduation, at an average base salary of $89,300. Offers ranged from $60,000 to $100,000 for candidates with no prior professional work experience.

In other words, data scientists have already become the rock stars of the next generation in analytics: Big Data analytics.

Vendors such as Cloudera, Hortonworks, MapR and others are commercializing Big Data software technologies, in effect making them easier to deploy and manage. The key challenge for organizations, therefore, is be to find the right talent to analyze the data.

According to Forrester Research's James Kobielus: "[Organizations will] have to ... hire statistical modelers, text mining professionals, people who specialize in sentiment analysis."

These people - who must also be skilled in developing adaptive software models, data cleaning and mining, and related tasks - are in short supply.

By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of Big Data to make effective decisions. This is all per a recent McKinsey & Company estimate.

Published by New Street Communications, A Simple Introduction to Data Science explains all aspects of this burgeoning field for professionals who will need to benefit from the technology, and as well for would-be data technologists.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Noreen Burlingame is a leading software and IT consultant. Lars Nielsen's bestsellers include The Little Book of Cloud Computing and Computing: A Business History.

EDITIONS AND PRICING
A Simple Introduction to Data Science is available in paperback ($12.95) and in eBook editions for both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's NOOK ($4.95).

For more information go to http://newstreetcommunications.com/businesstechnical/a_si... or contact Monica Wister: office@newstreetcommunications.com