Marketing Data Science: Modeling Techniques in Predictive Analytics with R and Python

1. Understanding Markets

“What makes the elephant guard his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes a muskrat guard his musk?”

—BERT LAHR AS COWARDLY LION IN The Wizard of Oz (1939)

While working on the first book in the Modeling Techniques series, I moved from Madison, Wisconsin to Los Angeles. I had a difficult decision to make about mobile communications. I had been a customer of U.S. Cellular for many years. I had one smartphone and two data modems (a 3G and a 4G) and was quite satisfied with U.S. Cellular services. In May of 2013, the company had no retail presence in Los Angeles and no 4G service in California. Being a data scientist in need of an example of preference and choice, I decided to assess my feelings about mobile ...