The Text Frontier - Text mining, voice mining and unstructured data analysis

Where has the time gone? Here in Texas the hot sun is still roasting, while local retailers are promoting their back to school items on sale. For several weeks now, I've had a blog idea brewing from a talk entitled "WHY COUNT CRIME WHEN YOU CAN PREVENT IT?" You'll see why it caught my interest by noting the image in the top left corner of this slide.



Dr Colleen McCue shows how handwritten police notes and data taken from phone calls can be analyzed to predict future locations and potential criminal events. She'll be speaking live at M2009 but for those who you want to hear her sooner - you can view the archived presentation at your leisure. Her engaging explanation illustrates how Analytics are helping Police departments do their job of keeping neighborhoods safer.

According to Dr McCue "Automated text analytic software could be game changing in information intensive tasks (e.g., a major case will have thousands of tips – the DC Sniper case was compromised in some ways because people focused on the “white van” – the software won’t get tired, bring bias, or forget what it just read). It also has tremendous potential in culling through a lot of interview data (e.g., the detainee data), particularly when you have disparate sources that are geographically diverse but likely connected (through common operational goals, training, etc). "

Three cheers for the FBI, local police - and your local government -- all holding future potential customer success stories for text analytics. Meanwhile you don't want to miss the recent white paper Text Mining for Safety describing how the Oil and Gas industry sees Text Analytics as the answer to moving beyond simply tracking accidents (counting them) to REDUCING hazards on the job. Text Analytics is keeping us safe on the job and at home.