Getting Started with Data: The first book you should read to successfully get along with data

When someone asks you, “what is data?” do you really know how to answer it correctly?

Our practical experience shows that 90% of the people answer yes to this question, but 99% couldn’t explain it correctly.

This entry-level book solves this problem for people looking to understand data with a technical or business background.

Is this book for me?
If you are a person working every day with systems like ERP and CRM or spreadsheets, but using “data” daily still strange or uncomfortable, this book is definitely for you.

Why we wrote this book?
Since 2012, every few months, we have had to teach dozens of new team members at Simbiose Ventures about concepts related to data. This training covered data and everything else associated with it, such as databases, data engineering, data analysis, and so on.

Before deciding to write this book, our training process at Simbiose looked like a patchwork quilt: hundreds of small pieces from books, articles, and courses that talked about data. When onboarding new members on our team, we had to drown them in information because we didn’t have a single, concrete source that would get them from “zero to hero” in the effort to understand data. This process usually brought two challenges:

1. People were scared off because there was a lot to study, even before starting to work;
2. It wasn’t efficient, as we had to assemble different study tracks for other people who were not going to perform similar roles.

This changed when a specific talented, anxious, and eager girl joined our team. We gave her the mission of studying all the materials we had and creating a single book that could introduce all the concepts about data to any new team member. The book you are reading now is the result of all this fantastic teamwork.

We aim to present the data world for those interested in its importance but unsure where to start. We included parts of the history of data, the importance of data, and how it revolutionized the way we manage and calculate it, to how technology elevates the possibilities of our work and life.

As data is now part of our daily lives, we believe that any person should read this book, especially people responsible for organizations’ decisions.

What to expect?

• After reading this book, you can expect to understand the main concepts and technical aspects of data.
• You will be able to recognize and understand most of the jargon used by data-related products and professionals as we gently introduce more than 50 terms and concepts related to data and analytics.
• You will certainly be able to talk to other people about data, some of its possible usages, and how to initiate your first data projects.
• Most importantly, you will surely understand what data means and how you can use it to improve your life and career.

What is this book not?
The “Getting Started With Data” book has no intention of:

1. Substituting other great data-related books that already exist. We humbly believe this book might be an excellent first step before getting into all the existing books, as many of them presume you already have some minimum knowledge about data.
2. Making you a “data engineer”, a “data scientist”, “data analyst”, “business intelligence professional”, and so on. The sole purpose of this book is to help you get started with data in a structured way.

If you already have a firm grasp of the basics and expect to run an incredible analysis or create an entire data infrastructure by reading this book, don’t waste your time. There are much better books and resources for that, as we detail in Chapter 8, section 8.4 (A Learning Path).