We are in the final countdown to the Analytics 2013 Conference to be held next week, October 21-22 at the Hyatt Regency Orlando. There is a power-packed agenda for the conference, featuring four very strong keynote presentations from Dr. Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS; Ed Gaffin, Walt Disney World; Will Hakes,
My aunt Susanne is an elderly lady, who lives at the countryside and looks forward to celebrating her 80th birthday soon. Since the 1960's she has had a telephone connection with her fixed line provider. At that time, and for many years later, in the country where my aunt lives,
Some recent press articles question the value of big data while a book takes the opposite approach; I’ll choose the middle way. The New York Times article ‘Is Big Data an Economic Big Dud?’ questions the value of digital data and the resulting increase in the amount of data. This
Did you know that more than 30,000 Americans die in traffic accidents every year? Interestingly, the U.S. import of mangoes from Brazil is found to be highly correlated with this fatality rate, as shown in the graph below. But are mango imports a good indicator of the future traffic fatality
Don’t worry! This is not an excerpt from a romantic love letter. The title of this blog post is an allusion to my talk on "Missing Values", at the A2013 conference in June in London. There is not much time for emotions: dealing with missing values in analysis is not
My wife rescued a dog a couple of years ago from a rural North Carolina rest stop . We named her "DOTi" in honor of the Department of Transportation. It took a while for us to get into the swing of being responsible owners; sometimes the first to leave for
How many analytical projects have foundered due to lack of problem definition and other soft skills? As my SAS colleague Sascha Schubert writes, people and process matter, in addition to great technology. Great technology is a great first step, but having the right people following the right process is critically important.
The increasing use of predictive analytics in mission-critical business decisions and operations brings new challenges to the forefront for many of our customers. Throughout the last year I spoke to many customers about their use of predictive analytics and where they see areas of improvement to achieve even more success
In part 1 of my thoughts about analytics maturity, I deferred talking about issues related to the actual assessment of your organization’s level. Today I intend to detail some of the ways my peers and I are thinking about analytical maturity, comment on scales in use today, and address some
As rain settles in over the green fields of England, I’ve been reading the Times Higher Education (THE) periodical. It’s always a lively read, as it invariably takes the part of untenured junior lecturers in any dispute. It is also very well researched and informed. This week’s THE edition has
