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What do your customers care about most? Using key driver analysis to find out.

After basic significance tests, T-tests, Z-tests and so on, key drivers analysis (KDA) is probably the second most popular statistically-based technique in market research. Given an outcome of interest a KDA gives us a measure of the relative importance of a set of attributes (potential drivers).Typical outcomes of interest in research are: Satisfaction – customer, employee etc. Purchase intent – how …

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Using predictive analytics and the tax inspector’s nose to spot fraud

Organisations hold information, lots of it. Often it’s all over the place and sometimes its not acknowledged as being useful but there is always lots of data from customer interaction and transaction information to production line or stocking information. The trick is learning how to use past data to do better in the future. Organisations …

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Do you have to be a data scientist to do predictive analytics?

What is a data scientist? The predictive analytics field seems to love nothing more than giving a new name to an established concept. In my last post I argued that the concept of ‘big data’ itself is nothing new. Over the last few years I’ve seen more and more job ads recruiting ‘data scientists’  and I find myself rather unjustifiably irritated …

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Five myths about big data

Big data is everywhere at the moment. There’s a lot of talk about it, much of which presents big data as a problem to be solved rather than as an opportunity to be seized. There are many organisations that could be using big data for powerful predictive analytics but aren’t, because they’ve bought into one …

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Why not now? The barriers to adopting true predictive analytics.

While reading Jared Diamond’s excellent book on the rise and subsequent global dominance of Eurasian societies Guns, Germs and Steel, I was stopped in my tracks by his chapter on the evolution of technology entitled Necessity’s Mother. Diamond briskly demolishes the commonly-held view that necessity is the mother of invention. In fact he argues that many …

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IBM SPSS Modeler – 8 reasons why it is still brilliant after all these years

IBM SPSS Modeler has been through quite the name changes since it first came onto the market as Clementine in the 1990s. In 1998 it was acquired by SPSS. Controversially, in my mind, SPSS then changed its name to SPSS Modeler (spelled the American way which causes no end of confusion in spell checks or when …

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Deployment of analytics – a great example of the Anna Karenina principle?

The Anna Karenina principle describes an endeavour in which a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms it to failure. Consequently, a successful endeavour (subject to this principle) is one where every possible deficiency has been avoided. The name of the principle derives from Leo Tolstoy's book Anna Karenina, which begins “Happy …

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Are the results of predictive analytics really that surprising?

It’s common to hear claims about how businesses will be transformed through the use of predictive analytics techniques with surprising and shock results that they never would have imagined to be the case. It’s particularly common for product or service vendors to make these kinds of claims when in pursuit of a possible sale. After …

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6 ways to increase the value of your predictive analytics project

In my last blog post I talked about how it’s now possible to automate large parts of your predictive analytics projects, removing the need to get stuck into the complex statistics yourself. In this post I’ll suggest some ways to maximise the chances of your predictive analytics projects being successful. 1.     Use a proven analytics …

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Getting started with advanced analytics – advice for analytics virgins

What do you think of when you hear phrases like predictive analytics, data mining or machine learning? For many people these terms sound suspiciously like ‘statistics on steroids’ and unfortunately, even in the more data-centric and numerate industries, that isn’t likely to elicit the most enthusiastic of responses. To be fair that’s hardly surprising, as …

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Could predictive analytics be the answer to Network Rail’s maintenance problems?

I read with interest, a little dismay and a dash of sympathy the recent news about the problems Network Rail is facing with customer delays. I’m a regular user of the UK railway network and the experience can be frustrating, especially when caught up in delays and disruption. However as a business owner myself I’m also sympathetic to …

Could predictive analytics be the answer to Network Rail’s maintenance problems? Read More »

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