Practical sql: a beginner’s Guide to Storytelling with Data pdfdrive com
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- Điều hướng trang này:
- INTRODUCTION
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Practical SQL is the work of many hands. My thanks, first, go to the team at No Starch Press. Thanks to Bill Pollock and Tyler Ortman for capturing the vision and sharpening the initial concept; to developmental editors Annie Choi and Liz Chadwick for refining each chapter; to copyeditor Anne Marie Walker for polishing the final drafts with an eagle eye; and to production editor Janelle Ludowise for laying out the book and keeping the process well organized. Josh Berkus, Kubernetes community manager for Red Hat, Inc., served as our technical reviewer. To work with Josh was to receive a master class in SQL and PostgreSQL. Thank you, Josh, for your patience and high standards. Thank you to Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and its members and staff past and present for training journalists to find great stories in data. IRE is where I got my start with SQL and data journalism. During my years at USA TODAY, many colleagues either taught me SQL or imparted memorable lessons on data analysis. Special thanks to Paul Overberg for sharing his vast knowledge of demographics and the U.S. Census, to Lou Schilling for many technical lessons, to Christopher Schnaars for his SQL expertise, and to Sarah Frostenson for graciously agreeing to write the book’s foreword. My deepest appreciation goes to my dear wife, Elizabeth, and our sons. Thank you for making every day brighter and warmer, for your love, and for bearing with me as I completed this book. INTRODUCTION Shortly after joining the staff of USA TODAY I received a data set I would analyze almost every week for the next decade. It was the weekly Best-Selling Books list, which ranked the nation’s top-selling books based on confidential sales data. The list not only produced an endless stream of story ideas to pitch, but it also captured the zeitgeist of America in a singular way. For example, did you know that cookbooks sell a bit more during the week of Mother’s Day, or that Oprah Winfrey turned many obscure writers into number one best-selling authors just by having them on her show? Week after week, the book list editor and I pored over the sales figures and book genres, ranking the data in search of the next headline. Rarely did we come up empty: we chronicled everything from the rocket-rise of the blockbuster Harry Potter series to the fact that Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss has become a perennial gift for new graduates. My technical companion during this time was the database programming language SQL (for Structured Query Language). Early on, I convinced USA TODAY’s IT department to grant me access to the SQL-based database system that powered our book list application. Using SQL, I was able to unlock the stories hidden in the database, which contained titles, authors, genres, and various codes that defined the publishing world. Analyzing data with SQL to discover interesting stories is exactly what you’ll learn to do using this book. tải về 5.77 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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