Philipp K. Janert

The techniques and tools presented in this book are essential to learning how to make sense of the data deluge that is upon us. Science is based on data and observations, so being dexterous with the methods and techniques in this book will make you a better scientist.

The author structures the book into different sections that each offer a new point of view on working with data: describing, modeling, and mining. The chapters offer a nice balance between theory and practice, but the theory is certainly there, so you should be comfortable with theory to get the most out of this book. Each chapter surveys an open source tool that is relevant to the techniques in that chapter and provides a short, motivating introduction.

Some parts the stuck out to me are the ones that described logarithmic plots and gaussian density curves. However, I unexpectedly enjoyed the section on financial modeling the most because data usually informs decisions and decisions usually involve money, so having an understanding of those concepts is very practical.

Overall, this author provides highly practical advise and it feels like a manual of hard-won knowledge from a long career.… (more)

First, you need to know this should not be considered a definitive reference manual; see the online gnuplot docs for that. This book reads like a no-nonsense tutorial.

That being said, the authors aim at a scientist audience who needs tools to make sense of raw data; they show how to tweak chart scales, fit curves, reinterpret data, and so on. Though gnuplot can be a great interactive canvas — and undoubtedly being able to easily switch data views is a nice plus — I feel the book lacks a bit on the actual look of charts. Even though gnuplot can be a handy tool to find correlations, I can't help but think that in the end, most charts are used to convey information to people who wouldn't dig into data details.

In the end though, what matters to me in a tutorial is to know the extent of possibilities, and to make it possible to use a reference manual without feeling lost, and I feel the book succeeds by giving me a great overview of what can be accomplished with gnuplot.… (more)