Interview with DecisionStats.com

Ajay Ohri of DecisionStats.com has a selection of interviews with people in the BI/analytics space, including James Taylor and John Fox, the creator of R Commander. Here’s an interview he did with me last week covering trends in predictive analytics, cloud computing, social network analysis, etc. Ajay- Describe your career in science from school to Senior Director in SAP to blogger/speaker. How do you think we can convince students of the benefits... [Read More...]

IBM Acquires SPSS – A Big Deal, or Not?

IBM announced recently that it would purchase statistics vendor SPSS for approximately $1.2 billion. Various commentators have been saying this is a very big deal: Bob Evans of InformationWeek: “I think IBM’s acquisition of SPSS will mark a seminal moment in that company’s evolution” Merv Adrian: “With one stroke, IBM has signalled that it believes itself ready to redraw the BI map…. Why does it matter so much? Simple: Predictive... [Read More...]

Thanksgiving Predictive Analytics

One of the difficulties of predictive analytics is that it relies on the past being a reliable predictor of the future — which is rarely the case in today’s fast-moving economies… Happy Thanksgiving. Unless you’re a turkey.  Read More →

Who Really Wants Predictive Analytics?

The value of predictive analytics seems obvious: who wants to “drive looking out of the rear view mirror”? Several recent books, articles and blog postings point to a resurgence of interest in the topic, but what the term actually means is — as usual in our industry – subject to some debate.  I’ve tended to use the term to refer to predictive models, overlapping with the term “data mining”,... [Read More...]