Chapter 1. Introduction to data modeling

You’re about to read a book devoted to data modeling. Before starting it, it is worth determining why you should learn data modeling at all. After all, you can easily grab good insights from your data by simply loading a query in Excel and then opening a PivotTable on top of it. Thus, why should you learn anything about data modeling?

As consultants, we are hired on a daily basis by individuals or companies who struggle to compute the numbers they need. They feel like the number they’re looking for is out there and can be computed, but for some obscure reason, either the formulas become too complicated to be manageable or the numbers do not match. In 99 percent of cases, this is due to some error in the ...

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