Category Archives: Business Analytics

What’s in a name?

Posted on June 2, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.” Romeo and Juliet Analytics, statistics, operations research, machine learning, predictive, prescriptive – which term if any do you prefer to combine all of … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Trends | Leave a comment

Does Machine Learning Require Programming?

Posted on May 8, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

“Machine learning is often touted as a field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Despite this common claim, anyone who has worked in the field knows that designing effective machine learning systems is a tedious … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics | 1 Comment

Is Analytics losing its competitive edge?

Posted on April 30, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

John Poppelaars just published a paper with this title. He refers to the review recently published by MIT Sloan Management “Beyond the Hype: The hard work behind analytics success“. One of the key findings is that analytics seems to be losing its … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Decision Optimization, Trends | Leave a comment

Machine Unlearning

Posted on March 18, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Machine learning systems are everywhere. They predict the weather, forecast earthquakes, provide recommendations based on the books and movies we like, and even apply the brakes on our cars when we’re not paying attention.  Two scientists recently introduced the concept called “machine … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Trends | Leave a comment

Sequential Decisions Connect Today’s and Future Decisions

Posted on March 18, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

This FICO’s post describes how a combination of Analytics and Optimization helps to predict and compare likely future outcomes of alternative actions and find the best decisions given business objectives. For example, a marketer may decide today to spend $70 in … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Decision Optimization | Leave a comment

Open Source Against Proprietary Data Science Vendors

Posted on March 17, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

On Mar 15, 2016 Domino Blog published Open Source Winning Against Proprietary Data Science Vendors: “With the recent publication of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics, we wanted to know how proprietary data science software vendors were faring against open … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Products, Trends | Leave a comment

AlphaGo Taught Itself

Posted on March 15, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

The computer program that defeated the world Go champion taught itself how to improve its game by playing millions of matches against itself, according to the head of the Google subsidiary that developed the software. “In AlphaGo’s case, that involved … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Trends | Leave a comment

Be Aware of Bad Analytics

Posted on February 16, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

This FICO post warns: “The word ‘analytics’ now means anything from advanced optimization to recording the number of cars in the car park. And because it is now so general, it has been divorced from the underlying technical considerations that were … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Trends | Leave a comment

Charles Barkley vs. Analytics

Posted on January 29, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

Basketball legend Charles Barkley “dealt a death blow to the burgeoning analytics industry” when he called Houston Rockets General Manager “one of those idiots who believes in analytics.” Read more about the difference between human experience (playing sports) and an abstraction … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Trends | Leave a comment

New Model for Learning by Prof. Vladimir Vapnik

Posted on January 13, 2016 by decisionmanagementcommunity

During the last 50 years, a strong machine learning theory has been developed. The common observation is that human students require much less examples for training than a learning machine. Why? Prof. Vladimir Vapnik explains: “that it is because the human students … Continue reading →

Posted in Business Analytics, Decision Models | Leave a comment