BOOK: Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions

Beautiful Data has been out since July 2009 however it still is such a great book for those interested in seeing what can be done with data. Beautiful Data is unique in that it wasn’t written by just one author but a collection of 39 authors in 20 chapters. The various authors from Nathan Yau’s “Seeing your life in Data” to Toby Segaran’s chapter called “Connecting Data” are amazingly useful examples of the use of data. How solutions are thought of and built utilizing data.

Here is a simple description:

In this insightful book, you’ll learn from the best data practitioners in the field just how wide-ranging — and beautiful — working with data can be. Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.
With Beautiful Data, you will:

• Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web
• Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups
• Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel
• Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research
• Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data
• Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data

That’s only small sample of what you’ll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book. Contributors include:

Nathan Yau Jonathan Follett and Matt Holm J.M. Hughes Raghu Ramakrishnan, Brian Cooper, and Utkarsh Srivastava Jeff Hammerbacher Jason Dykes and Jo Wood Jeff Jonas and Lisa Sokol Jud Valeski Alon Halevy and Jayant Madhavan Aaron Koblin with Valdean Klump Michal Migurski Jeff Heer Coco Krumme Peter Norvig Matt Wood and Ben Blackburne Jean-Claude Bradley, Rajarshi Guha, Andrew Lang, Pierre Lindenbaum, Cameron Neylon, Antony Williams, and Egon Willighagen Lukas Biewald and Brendan O’Connor Hadley Wickham, Deborah Swayne, and David Poole Andrew Gelman, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Yair Ghitza Toby Segaran