📕 13 Recommended Books for a New DS to Learn the Basics

These are books recommended by a data scientist mentor whom I deeply respect. I will introduce books where you can learn the fundamental knowledge and approaches required to participate in data analysis and utilization projects.

This is super useful information, so be sure to bookmark it!

I think these books are also recommended for those who want to try their hand at data utilization or those who want to learn basic knowledge systematically.

Let's polish our DS skills from the basics together 🚀

Book Introductions

① Soft Skills

● Consulting Skills 1

○ What a First-Year Consultant Learns
It summarizes the super basics of business that many people surprisingly fail to do ⭐️
I highly recommend this book as the absolute foundation for every working professional.

Important points are summarized compactly, making it both useful and easy to read.
Although they are basic things, it was very educational as it covers points that are extremely important for growing and achieving results at work.
This is a book I can sincerely recommend to young professionals or those who want to build a solid foundation of skills!!

○ Always Achieve Results with KPIs
Useful for the upstream of all businesses!

○ Start with the Issue
A classic! A book you must read if you are going to do consulting. I highly recommend it to those who want to acquire logical thinking skills, which are an essential ability among consulting skills.
I felt that it was summarized in a truly MECE way regarding logical thinking!

○ Being Able to Put It into Words Becomes a Weapon
It summarizes the laws of words that move people's hearts by a notable copywriter. It might not be as talked about as other books, but I think it's a good one!

● Consulting Skills 2

The classic thinking method series by Kazunari Uchida
Why do people with a consulting background achieve success everywhere?
Absorb that versatile know-how and increase your market value to advance your career, even if you aren't a consultant 🚀
○ Hypothesis Thinking

○ Issue Thinking

○ Right-Brain Thinking

● Perspective on Business Utilization of Data

You cannot become a data scientist who can succeed in business with data science alone
Cultivate a data utilization perspective and become a talent who creates business value through data utilization and analysis!

○ Textbook on Data Utilization
You cannot obtain business value (results) just by utilizing accumulated data. In fact, I think there are not a few cases where people tried to utilize data but could not obtain business results.
This is a book that explains the steps of data utilization to achieve solid results against these common challenges in the field of data utilization!

○ Everything About AI and Data Analysis Projects
A book that focuses on business acumen, one of the three necessary skills for a data scientist. Even with DS skills, I think things don't always go so smoothly in actual AI and data analysis projects. I remember being troubled because I didn't know the ropes when I started out with only data science skills (though I still have a long way to go, haha).
This is a must-read for anyone doing DS in a practical setting!

② Data Analysis Skills (Time Series Analysis

Time series analysis, which has many opportunities for use in data utilization and analysis in all kinds of businesses.
When dealing with time series data, these are the ones you must master!

○ Econometric Time Series Analysis of Economic and Financial Data
Explains basic concepts carefully and introduces the knowledge necessary for applying time series models to actual data.
[Contents] Basic Concepts / ARMA Processes / Forecasting / VAR Models / Unit Root Processes / Spurious Regression and Cointegration / GARCH Models / Models with State Changes

○ Time Series Analysis with Python
A book where you can learn hands-on how to handle time series data to achieve results while using actual data.
It is a recommended, high-quality book that is useful for acquiring skills necessary for practical work, such as implementation skills!!

③ Data Engineering Skills (SQL

In data utilization and analysis projects, preprocessing tends to take up 80% of the man-hours, so you can't get started without SQL...
This is a recommended book that is easy for beginners to study!

○ SQL Recipes for Big Data Analysis and Utilization
SQL utilization techniques and recipe collection for the big data era.
This book compiles reports and SQL code that the author actually creates in daily work into a more generalized recipe collection. It explains practical methods and know-how for specific scenes such as "data processing," "grasping sales," "grasping users," "grasping user behavior within a website," "detecting outliers," "evaluating search functions," and "recommendations."

○ Learning from Masters: A Thorough Guide to SQL, 2nd Edition - For Those Who Don't Want to Remain a Beginner
It uncovers and conveys the mechanisms that form the principles of SQL, as well as the background of what the people who created this language were thinking when they shaped it into its current form.
・For DB engineers and programmers who want to move beyond beginner status or aim for higher levels
・For people who want to know "what SQL actually is"

(Partially quoted from the Amazon introduction)