Daily Archives: July 19, 2014

Chart of the Day: 07/19/2014

Big Data, Predictive Analytics

PredictiveAnalyticsSource: Predictive Analytics for Business Advantage, TDWI Research Report,  2014.

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Having been involved in applying data and analytics to improve speed and quality of business decisions over the last 20+ years, I’ve observed that the best data scientist asks the “so what” question often and obsesses with operationalizing and automating business decisions  stemming from analytics using software, prior to even touching the data.  This often requires envisioning a new future  – modulated by organizational culture, people, and processes – and requisite changes needed for business success.

Big Data: Quote of the Day 07/19/2014

Big Data, Creativity

A quote in From Big Data to Deep Data caught my attention:

 

The real problem of big data is that we are increasingly outsourcing our capacity to sense and think to algorithms programmed into machines

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That is the real benefit and not the problem.   Human beings find it almost impossible to identify meaningful patterns (i.e., sense and develop a perspective) in big data, without the guidance of algorithms, and find the proverbial  needle in the haystack.   Big data is usually great at making lots of little, but rational, decisions in a snap, while the human brain is great at making a big, usually non-rational (not irrational), and infrequent decision – deliberate and slow.   Creativity, imagination and judgment – hallmarks of our brain –  should be augmented with machine (or rational) intelligence, to get the most of big data.  Consequently, in the next two decades, you will see a decrease in the value of the left-brained data scientist (as algorithms get better at rational decisions) and increase in the value of the right-brained creative.