Category Archives: Data Science

Reach Analytics Maturity through Fast Automatic Modeling

The late great baseball legend Yogi Berra was credited with saying this gem: “The future ain’t what it used to be.” In the context of big data analytics, I am now inclined to believe that Yogi was very insightful — his statement is an excellent description of Prescriptive Analytics.

Prescriptive Analytics goes beyond Descriptive and Predictive Analytics in the maturity framework of analytics. “Descriptive” analytics delivers hindsight (telling you what did happen, by generating reports from your databases), and “predictive” delivers foresight (telling you what will happen, through machine learning algorithms). Going one better, “prescriptive” delivers insight: discovering so much about your application domain (from your collection of big data and information resources, through data science and predictive models) that you are now able to take the actions (e.g., set the conditions and parameters) needed to achieve a prescribed (better, optimal, desired) outcome.

So, if predictive analytics can use historical training data sets to tell us what will happen in the future (e.g., which products a customer will buy; where and when your supply chain will need replenishing; which vehicles in your corporate fleet will need repairs; which machines in your manufacturing plant will need maintenance; or which servers in your data center will fail), then prescriptive analytics can alter that future (i.e., the future ain’t what it used to be).

When dealing with large high-variety data sets, with many features and measured attributes, it is often difficult to build accurate models that are generally useful under a variety of conditions and that capture all of the complexities of the response functions and explanatory variables within your business application. In such cases, fast automatic modeling tools are needed. These tools can help to identify the minimum viable feature set for accurate predictive and prescriptive modeling. For this purpose, I recommend that you check out the analytics solutions from the fast automatic modeling folks at http://soft10ware.com/.

The Soft10 software package is trained to observe quickly and report automatically the most significant, informative and explanatory dependencies in your data. Those capabilities are the “secret sauce” in insightful prescriptive analytics, and they coincide nicely with another insightful quote from Yogi Berra: “You can observe a lot by just watching.”

(Read the full blog at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/prescriptive-analytics-future-aint-what-used-kirk-borne)

Predictive versus Prescriptive Analytics

Predictive Analytics (given X, find Y) vs. Prescriptive Analytics (given Y, find X)

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Fraud Analytics: Fast Automatic Modeling for Customer Loyalty Programs

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the deep and dark connection between big money and big fraud. One need only look at black markets for drugs and other controlled and/or precious commodities. But what about cases where the commodity is soft, intangible, and practically virtual? I am talking about loyalty and rewards programs.

A study by Colloquy (in 2011) estimated that the loyalty and rewards programs in the U.S. alone had an estimated outstanding value of $48 billion US dollars. This is “outstanding” value because it doesn’t carry tangible benefit until the rewards or loyalty points are cashed in, redeemed, or otherwise exchanged for something that you can “take to the bank”. In anybody’s book, $48 billion is really big value — i.e., big money rewards for loyal customers, and a big target for criminals seeking to defraud the rightful beneficiaries of these rewards.

The risk vs. reward equation in loyalty programs now has huge numbers on both sides of that equation. There’s great value for customers. There’s great return on investment for businesses seeking loyal customers. And that’s great bait to lure criminals into the game.

In the modern digital marketplace, it is now possible to manipulate payment systems on a larger scale, thereby defrauding the business of thousands of dollars in rewards points. The scale of the fraud could match the scale of the entire loyalty program for some firms, which would therefore bankrupt their supply of rewards for their loyal and faithful customers. This is a really big problem waiting to happen unless something is done about it.

The something that can be done about it is to take advantage of the fast predictive modeling capabilities for fraud detection that are enabled by access to more data (big data), better technology (analytics tools), and more insightful predictive and prescriptive algorithms (data science).

Fraud analytics is no silver bullet. It won’t rid the world of fraudsters and other criminals. But at least fast automatic modeling will give firms better defenses, more timely alerts, and faster response capabilities. This is essential because, in the digital era, it is not only business that is moving at the speed of light, but so also are the business disruptors.

Some simple use cases for fraud analytics within the context of customer loyalty reward programs can be found in the article “Where There’s Big Money, There’s Big Fraud (Analytics)“.

Payment fraud reaches across a vast array of industries: insurance (of all kinds), underwriting, social programs, purchasing and procurement, and now loyalty and rewards programs. Be prepared. Check out the analytics solutions from the fast automatic modeling folks at http://soft10ware.com/.

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Blogging My Way Through Data Science, Big Data, and Analytics

I frequently write blog posts on other sites.  You can find those articles here (updated March 21, 2016):

I also write “one-off” blog posts, such as these examples:

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What Motivates a Data Scientist?

I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Manu Jeevan for his Big Data Made Simple blog.  He asked me several questions:

  • How did you get into data science?
  • What exactly is enterprise data science?
  • How does Booz Allen Hamilton use data science?
  • What skills should business executives have to effectively to communicate with data scientists?
  • How is big data changing the world? (Please give us interesting examples)
  • What are your go-to tools for doing data science?
  • In your TedX talk Big Data, Small World you gave special attention to association discovery, is there a specific reason for that?
  • The Data Scientist has been called the sexiest job of the 21st century. Do you agree?
  • What advice would you give to people aspiring for a long career in data science?

All of these questions were ultimately aimed at understanding the key underlying question: “What motivates you to work in data science?” The question about enterprise data science really comes the closest to identifying what really motivates me — that is, I am exceedingly fortunate every day to be given the opportunity to work with a fantastic team of data scientists at Booz Allen Hamilton, with the mandate to explore data as a corporate asset and to exploit data science as a core capability in order to achieve more profound discoveries, to make better (data-driven) decisions, and to propel new innovations across numerous domains, industries, agencies, and organizations. My Data Science Declaration also sums up these motivating factors for me.

You can see the full scope of my answers to the above questions here: http://bigdata-madesimple.com/interview-with-leading-data-science-expert-kirk-borne/.

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Just-in-Time Supply Chain Management with Data Analytics

A common phrase in SCM (Supply Chain Management) is Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory. JIT refers to a management strategy in which raw materials, products, or services are delivered to the right place, at the right time, as demand requires. This has always been an excellent business goal, but the power to excel at JIT inventory management is now improving dramatically with the increased use of data analytics across the supply chain.

In the article “Operational Analytics and Droning About Big Data“, we discussed two examples of JIT: (1) a just-in-time supply replenishment system for human bases on the Moon, and (2) the proposal by Amazon to use drones to deliver products to your front door “just in time”! The Internet of Things will almost certainly generate similar use cases and benefits.

Descriptive analytics (hindsight) tells you what has already happened in your supply chain. If there was a deficiency or problem somewhere, then you can react to that event. But, that is “old school” supply chain management. Modern analytics is predictive (foresight), allowing you to predict where the need will occur (in advance) so that you can proactively deliver products and services at the point of need, just in time.

The next advance in analytics is prescriptive (insight), which uses optimization techniques (from operations research) in combination with insights and knowledge of your business (systems, processes, and resources) in order to optimize your delivery systems, for the best possible outcome (greater sales, fewer losses, reduced inventory, etc.). Just-in-time supply chain management then becomes something more than a reality — it now becomes an enabler of increased efficiency and productivity.

Many more examples of use cases in the manufacturing and retail industries (and elsewhere) where just-in-time analytics is important (and what you can do about it) have been enumerated by the fast Automatic Modeling folks from Soft10, Inc. Check out their fast predictive analytics products at http://soft10ware.com/.

(Read more about these ideas at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/supply-chain-data-analytics-jit-legit-kirk-borne)

Follow Kirk Borne on Twitter @KirkDBorne

 

Definitive Guide to Data Literacy For All – A Reading List

(UPDATE – April 8, 2021) See this excellent new book by Jordan Morrow: “Be Data Literate: The Data Literacy Skills Everyone Needs To Succeed”, available at amzn.to/3rdWfsn

Book: Be Data Literate: The Data Literacy Skills Everyone Needs to Succeed

Be Data Literate: The Data Literacy Skills Everyone Needs to Succeed

One of the most important roles that we should be embracing right now is training the next-generation workforce in the art and science of data. Data Literacy is a fundamental literacy that should be imparted at the earliest levels of learning, and it should continue through all years of education. Education research has shown the value of using data in the classroom to teach any subject — so, I am not advocating the teaching of hard-core data science to children, but I definitely promote the use of data mining and data science applications in the teaching of other subjects (perhaps, in all subjects!). See my “Using Data in the Classroom Reading List” here on this subject. See also the book “Data Literacy – A User’s Guide” and this book:

Book: The Basics of Data Literacy

The Basics of Data Literacy, available at https://amzn.to/2IZ2BYY

And see this book:

Book - Data Literacy: A User's Guide

Data Literacy: A User’s Guide, available at https://amzn.to/2uLPfKB

I encourage you to read a position paper that I wrote (along with a few astronomy colleagues) for the US National Academies of Science in 2009 that addressed the data science literacy requirements in astronomy. Though focused on the needs in astronomy workforce development for the coming decade, the paper also contains more general discussion of “data literacy for the masses” that is applicable to any and all disciplines, domains, and organizations: “Data Science For The Masses.”

Two “…For Dummies” books can help in those situations, to bring data literacy to a much larger audience (of students, business leaders, government agencies, educators, etc.). Those new books are: “Data Science For Dummies” by Lillian Pierson, and “Data Mining for Dummies” by Meta Brown.

Finally, here is one more that I believe is an excellent data literacy companion: The Data Journalism Handbook.

Update (April 2016) – The following site has a wealth of information on the use of “Data in Education”: http://www.ands.org.au/working-with-data/publishing-and-reusing-data/data-in-education

Data Mining For Dummies

(Read more here: http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/dummies-for-data-science-a-reading-list)


Disclosure statement: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.


Follow Kirk Borne on Twitter @KirkDBorne

Analytics Maturity Models

In the world of big data analytics, there are several emerging standards for measuring Analytics Capability Maturity within organizations.  One of these has been presented in the TIBCO Analytics Maturity Journey – their six steps toward analytics maturity are:  Measure, Diagnose, Predict and Optimize, Operationalize, Automate, and Transform.  Another example is presented through the SAS Analytics Assessment, which evaluates business analytics readiness and capabilities in several areas.  The B-eye Network Analytics Maturity Model mimics software engineering’s CMM (Capability Maturity Model) – their 6 levels of maturity are:  Level 0 = Incomplete; Level 1 = Performed; Level 2 = Managed; Level 3 = Defined, Level 4 = Quantitatively Managed; and Level 5 = Optimizing.

The most “mature” standard in the field is probably the IDC Big Data and Analytics (BDA) MaturityScape Framework.  This BDA framework (measured across the five core dimensions of intent, data, technology, process, and people) consists of five stages of maturity, which essentially parallel the others mentioned above:  Ad hoc, Opportunistic, Repeatable, Managed, and Optimized.

All of these are excellent models for analytics maturity.  But, if you find these different models to be too theoretical or opaque or unattainable, then I suggest a more practical model for your business analytics progression from ground zero all of the way up to cognitive analytics:  from Descriptive and Diagnostic, to Predictive, to Prescriptive, and finally to Cognitive.

A specific example from the field of Marketing is SYNTASA‘s PMI (Personalization Maturity Index). Personalization Capability Maturity parallels the Analytics Capability Maturity frameworks within the specific context of data-driven customer-centric one-to-one marketing and segmentation of one. Read more about this in the article The Battle for Customer Personalization – Divisive Clustering is Good For Youand in much more detail within SYNTASA’s PMI white paper linked above.

(continue reading here:  https://www.mapr.com/blog/raising-standard-big-data-analytics-profession)

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A Day in the Life of Confounding Factors and Explanatory Variables

Would we trust an insurance provider who sets motorbike insurance rates based on the sales of sour cream? Or would we schedule our space launches according to the number of doctoral degrees awarded in Sociology?

Probably all of us would agree that this kind of decision-making is unjustified. A specific decision like this appears to be only superficially supported by the evidence of correlations between those various factors, but is there more to the story? Does it go any deeper? What if there exists a hidden causal factor that induces the apparently spurious correlation?

For example, suppose the increase in space launches and the increase in doctoral degrees in Sociology were both related to an increase in government investments in research studies on the sociological impacts of establishing a permanent human colony on the Moon. This case reveals a hidden causal connection in an otherwise strange correlation. The explanatory variable (which is a hidden confounding factor) is the research investment, and the response variables are the space launches and doctoral degrees.

What about other cases? What about the evidence that sour cream sales correlate with motorbike accidents? In such cases, shouldn’t we all be pleased to see organizations making evidence-based data-driven objective decisions (especially in this brave new world of exploding data volumes and ubiquitous analytics)? No, I don’t think so!!

So, what kind of world is this?

Welcome to the world of explanatory variables and confounding factors!

Statistical literacy is needed now more than ever (to paraphrase H. G. Wells). This includes awareness of and adherence to common principles of statistical reasoning. For example…

(continue reading here http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/feature/7914611/A-Day-in-the-Life-of-Explanatory-Variables-and-Confounding-Factors.html)

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4 Reasons why an Accurate Analytics Model may not be Good Enough

Here are four reasons why the result of your analytics modeling might be correct (according to some accuracy metric), but it might not be the right answer:

  1. Your model may be underfit.

  2. Your model may be overfit.

  3. Your model may be biased.

  4. Your model may be suffering from the false positive paradox.

In data science, we are trained to keep searching even after we find a model that appears to be accurate. Data Scientists should continue searching for a better solution, for at least the four reasons listed above. Please note that I am not advocating “paralysis of analysis”, where never-ending searches for new and better solutions are just an excuse (or a behavior pattern) that prevents one from making a final decision. Good leaders know when an answer is “good enough”. We discussed this in a previous article: “Machine Unlearning – The Value of Imperfect Models”…

(For more discussion of the four cases listed above, continue reading herehttps://www.mapr.com/blog/4-reasons-look-further-accurate-answer-your-analytics-question)

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The Definitive Q&A for Aspiring Data Scientists

I was recently asked five questions by Alex Woodie of Datanami for the article, “So You Want To Be A Data Scientist” that he was preparing. He used a few snippets from my full set of answers. The longer version of my answers provided additional advice. For aspiring data scientists of all ages, I provide here the full, unabridged version of my answers, which may help you even more to achieve your goal. (Note: I paraphrase Alex’s original questions in quotes below.)

1. “What is the number one piece of advice you give to aspiring data scientists?”

My number one piece of advice always is to follow your passions first. Know what you are good at and what you care about, and pursue that. So, you might be good at math, or programming, or data manipulation, or problem solving, or communications (data journalism), or whatever. You can do that flavor of data science within the context of any domain: scientific research, government, media communications, marketing, business, healthcare, finance, cybersecurity, law enforcement, manufacturing, transportation, or whatever. As a successful data scientist, your day can begin and end with you counting your blessings that you are living your dream by solving real-world problems with data. I saw a quote recently that summarizes this: “If you think your scarce data science skills could be better used elsewhere, be bold and make the move.” (Reference).

2. “What are the most important skills for an aspiring data scientist to acquire?”

There are many skills under the umbrella of data science, and we should not expect any one single person to be a master of them all. The best solution to the data science talent shortage is a team of data scientists. So I suggest…

(continue reading herehttps://www.mapr.com/blog/definitive-qa-aspiring-data-scientists)

Follow Kirk Borne on Twitter @KirkDBorne