Ken,

Interesting post. You asked Martin above "What else could we do as a discipline to get the word out that our skills can fill some of this analytics talent gap?" I think that Hal, whom I know well and respect a lot, shortchanged economists in the quote above. I agree that statisticians are critical in the new era of big data (whatever that means), but they have a very particular way of viewing the world, similar to machine learning folks: there is a data-generating process, and we need to figure it out. Economists are a bit more weary about that so-called data-generating process. We recognize that the data is a consequence of behavior, and that the behavior depends on incentives, which in turn depend on institutional details and market design elements. So, the need to interpret the data for causal relationships is tricky, and this is where economists, and in particular applied microeconomists, come in very handy. I don't need to go far beyond the work that I have done with my team at ebay, or some of the work that people like Hal himself has been involved in, to see that our skills do indeed fill some of this analytics talent gap in critical ways.

Thanks,

Steve