Are you interested in learning more about the business and sociology behind data science? Here are some great books on the discipline brought to you by datascience@berkeley, the online Master of Information and Data Science from the UC Berkeley School of Information.

 About Data Science

Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World  — Christopher Steiner, 2012

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think — Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier, 2013

The Human Face of Big Data  — Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, 2012

Numbersense: How to Use Big Data to Your Advantage  — Kaiser Fung, 2013

Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation — Joel Gurin, 2013

Privacy in the Age of Big Data — Theresa M. Payton and Theodore Claypoole, 2014

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to be Smart  — Ian Ayres, 2007

Data Science for Businesses

Big Data at Work: Dispelling the Myths, Uncovering the Opportunities  — Thomas H. Davenport, 2014

Data Science for Business: What You Need to Know About Data Mining and Data-Analytic Thinking  — Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, 2013

Too Big to Ignore: The Business Case for Big Data  — Phil Simon, 2013

Data Science in Popular Culture

Data, A Love Story: How I Gamed Online Dating to Meet My Match — Amy Webb, 2013

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia  — Anthony M. Townsend, 2013

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — Michael Lewis, 2003

Data Visualization

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions  — Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher, 2009

Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design  — Randy Krum, 2013

The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions  — Phil Simon, 2014

Data Points: Visualization That Means Something  — Nathan Yau, 2013

Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics  — Nathan Yau, 2011

How To’s & Manuals

Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information Into Insight  — John Foreman, 2013

Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline  — Cathy O’Neil and Rachel Schutt, 2013

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data  — Charles Wheelan, 2013

The Sociology of Data Science

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything — Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 2005

Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die  — Eric Siegel, 2013

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t  — Nate Silver, 2012

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance  — Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 2009

Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture  — Erez Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel, 2013

To learn more about the UC Berkeley School of Information and the online Master of Information and Data Science program, visit our website.