The book R for Business Analytics by Ajay Ohri sets out to look at “some of the most common tasks performed by business analysts and helps the user navigate the wealth of information in R and its 4000 packages.” In my opinion it succeeds in covering an extensive range of topics but fails to provide anything of substantial use to its intended audience. At least, not anything that could not be uncovered by a brief internet search.

There is little detailed treatment of any particular topic related to Business Analytics. It is, at best, a high level overview of many of the capabilities of R. There is scant logical flow and the book appears to have been cobbled together from information readily available on the Internet. The editing is questionable and the code examples are poorly formatted. I also found the use of eponymous variable names in many of the code examples a little disturbing: is this really good practice? I don’t think so.

Admittedly the author points out that the book is not aimed at statisticians, but rather at analytics professionals and students, where previous experience with R is not a prerequisite. However I suspect that neither of these groups would find the book very fulfilling.

Not everything about the book is bad though: the author does cover a diverse range of packages and I was pleased to learn about some interesting packages, of which I was previously unaware.

I feel a little uncomfortable posting such a negative review. For a more positive take on the book, you can read this review. However, if you are considering buying this book, I would personally advise against it. I felt more than a little cheated.

The post Book Review: R for Business Analytics appeared first on Exegetic Analytics.