Lately, I have been thinking about the entire big data trend. Fundamentally, it makes sense to me and I believe it is useful for some enterprise class problems, but something about it had been troubling me and I decided to take some time and jot down my thoughts. As I thought more about it, I [...]
Archive for the ‘Analytics’ Category
3 Big Data Myths for Enterprises
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Competing on Analytics, Data, tagged big data on June 17, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Business Analyst Vs. Data Scientist
Posted in Analytics, Analytics Culture, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Visualization on June 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Ken Rona tweeted earlier today about a subject which stuck a chord. He was writing about the difference between a business analyst and data analyst (or data scientist as they are increasingly called). I wanted to expand on the idea as It is important to distinguish between the two roles. I have seen a lot [...]
Inbox Influence: Insight where it matters
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Competing on Analytics on June 8, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I have earlier written about that Insight at the point of decision making/action is critical. I came across a great example of it from the good folks at Sunlight Foundation, who are trying to bring transparency to political influence. Inbox Influence is a browser extension that adds political influence data to your Gmail messages. With [...]
The Top Down Nature of ‘Competing on Analytics’
Posted in Analytics, Analytics Culture, Business Intelligence, Competing on Analytics on June 7, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Think about the large successful organizations which are known for harnessing information for competitive advantage; P&G, Goldman Sachs, Capital One, Harrah’s, Progressive Insurance and you will find one thing in common. Their C level executives drive data driven decision making top down. And the more organizations I see, the more I get convinced that it [...]
Decision Support to Challenge Property Taxes
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Visualization, tagged decision support tools on June 4, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The central thesis of my work for last few years has been focusing on the rise of integrated decision support systems which combine data, analytics and visualization to solve a very specific problem extremely well. These systems are usually prescriptive (instead of predictive) in nature and prove to be game changers in their space. I [...]
Standing on the shoulders of giants: Week of 1/24/2001
Posted in Analytics, Data, Data Mining, Visualization, tagged tweets on January 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Interesting stories on information & decisions that influenced my thinking and were tweeted by me: Extending the value of operational #data to serve your customers. Netflix ISP comparison http://tinyurl.com/4whjd3o Coal economics and computer chips. Demand driver for need for more #analytics http://bit.ly/f6Hme2 Excellent paper for #analytics practitioners on customer lifetime value and RFM models http://bit.ly/dkdkaa [...]
Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 7)
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, tagged predictive analytics, Testing on June 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Theme 7: Prototype, Pilot, Scale Edison did not invent the light bulb. He took a working concept and developed hundreds of prototypes rapidly, tested them and along the way figured out improvements that were required to scale his invention for commercial use. Julian Trubin writes about the prototyping process: In 1879 Edison obtained an improved [...]
Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 6)
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Integration, tagged decision making, predictive analytics, program management on March 24, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Theme 6: Delivering the prediction at the point of decision is critical In 2007, my wife worked as a hospitalist in Charlotte. Around that time, I noticed a strange pre-work ritual she followed. She took printouts of a few pages from the Wal-Mart website before going to work. The behavior was surprising and one day [...]
Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 5)
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Industry Perspective, Visualization, tagged decision making, History of Medicine, predictive analytics on March 16, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Theme 5: Good data visualization leads to smarter decisions. The above visualization has arguably saved more lives than all predictive analytics initiatives combined. It is visualization created in 1854 by Dr. John Snow. As Miles Dowsett has written, In 1854 London was the biggest city the world had ever seen, and was literally drowning in [...]
Predictive Analytics: 8 Things to Keep in Mind (Part 4)
Posted in Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Mining, Industry Perspective, tagged Data, decision making, predictive analytics, statistics on March 8, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Theme 4: Statistical techniques and tools are not likely to provide competitive advantage I read this interesting post from Sijin describing his journey to master a video game (emphasis added by me) All this kind of reminded me of my experiences with finding the perfect weapon while playing Call of Duty 4 over the past [...]
