Reader reviews

Decent, but uneven. Some chapters are much stronger than others.

There is a particular kind of technical book that is dense without being difficult, and this is one of them. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. The book rewards careful reading. Skimming it would be a mistake. Three stars feels about right. It will stay on my shelf, but it will not be the first one I reach for.

Worth every page. I have already recommended it to two colleagues.

This is the third book I have read on analytics this year, and it is comfortably the best of them. The index and cross-references are surprisingly good, which matters for a book I will come back to. The progression from chapter to chapter is well thought out; nothing feels out of order. The early chapters move quickly through material I already knew, but the later sections were genuinely new to me. This is the book I wish had existed when I started working with analytics.

Good value. Not perfect, but I would buy another book from this author.

I had been on the fence about this one for a while, and I should have bought it sooner. I appreciated the honesty about what the book does not cover — it saved me from expecting things that were not there. The code samples assume a particular environment, which took a bit of fiddling to get running properly. The examples are small enough to type out and experiment with, which is exactly what I want from a book like this. Four stars, and I suspect a second edition could easily push it to five.

I have read a lot of books on this subject and this is the clearest.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. A few of the examples could be more realistic, but the underlying points come across clearly. The chapters on game development are the strongest — the examples are stripped down but complete, and I could follow along without constant guessing. I have already recommended it to two colleagues and will recommend it to more.

Recommended, with the caveat that it is not a gentle introduction.

I read this over a couple of weekends alongside a small side project, which turned out to be the ideal way to approach it. I particularly liked the way the author builds up from simple cases before introducing the harder material. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. Solid, and I would buy another book from this author without hesitation.

Some sections were excellent and others felt like filler.

I came to this book already familiar with the basics, and it still had plenty to offer. The exercises at the end of each chapter are worth doing — they caught a few misconceptions I did not know I had. Some of the diagrams are dense and I had to reread a few sections, though that may just be me. Useful as a reference, less so as a straight read from cover to cover.