Blog

Like a lot of consultants working in the analytics industry, I’ve built up an extensive portfolio of materials to illustrate […]

Here is an interesting confession. I work for an analytics company but I would really rather not think about or […]

I was talking to a potential client recently who was frustrated by the lack of ‘real analysis’ happening in his […]

When we’re talking to potential clients about advanced analytics we often ask them what tools they’re currently using. More often […]

In most businesses it’s not enough to simply be measuring outcomes like customer satisfaction, sales, customer churn rates, subscription renewals, […]

Surveys remain one of the most popular forms of market research, and consequently we regularly work with customers on large […]

Most companies these days are aware of the potential value that advanced analytics could offer them. Lots of people are […]

Many of our clients regularly hire new analysts and we’re often involved in discussions about what the core skills are […]

Many of the analysts we speak to are being pushed over to R, primarily because it’s open source and therefore […]

It’s not uncommon for people to say to us that they don’t understand why they should pay for industry standard […]

It’s not uncommon to talk to potential clients who consider themselves to already be very much data-driven in the way […]

As we help our clients get up and running with the predictive analytics tools and skills they need, we see some […]

Data science is everywhere at the moment. Nearly as everywhere as big data, but not quite. Books out there are […]

An in depth guide to using the chi-squared test to determine statistical significance.

What is correlation? Correlation is a term that we employ in everyday speech to denote things that appear to have […]

We spend a great deal of our time at Smart Vision helping our clients to establish the use of predictive […]

Data science is on the rise. A couple of years back Harvard Business Review suggested that ‘data scientist’ is the […]

Prescriptive analytics is a relatively recent development beyond the broader disciplines of predictive analytics and data science. In this blog […]

In my career I’ve seen many examples of successful and unsuccessful data mining projects. I’m often asked how clients can […]

In this blog post I’m going to suggest  some ways in which predictive analytics can help retailers weather the economic […]

It’s well known that there’s a growing skills gap in the area of analytics. As organisations are waking up to […]

When talking to companies who have yet to invest in predictive analytics I am often asked if I am sure […]

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 […]

Data visualisation is a hot topic at the moment. And with good reason: a picture paints a thousand words … and the […]

The past decade has seen huge growth in the practical use of data mining and analytics. Increasingly, analytics is being […]

Organisations hold information, lots of it. Often it’s all over the place and sometimes its not acknowledged as being useful […]

What is a data scientist? The predictive analytics field seems to love nothing more than giving a new name to an established […]

I talked in my last blog post about the confusion that often emerges around how much data is enough to […]

When I’m talking to prospective clients something I hear a lot is ‘but we don’t really have enough data to […]

It never ceases to surprise me at the wide array of interesting and smart folks we have the privilege to […]

Predictive analytics can really pay dividends for charities but I often find that such organisations are reluctant to invest in […]

Big data is everywhere at the moment. There’s a lot of talk about it, much of which presents big data […]

Moving beyond RFM analysis to create truly data-driven customer segments RFM stands for recency, frequency, monetary value and is a […]

When I’m talking to prospective clients, one of the questions I’m regularly asked is why they should invest in expensive […]

While reading Jared Diamond’s excellent book on the rise and subsequent global dominance of Eurasian societies Guns, Germs and Steel, I […]

Predictive analytics uses statistical techniques and mathematical algorithms to analyse existing data and extrapolate it forward to predict what’s likely […]

There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently as to whether or not the whole big data analytics agenda has […]

The Anna Karenina principle describes an endeavour in which a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms […]

People often think of predictive analytics as something that’s primarily useful for commercial organisations or is too expensive for charities […]

It’s common to hear claims about how businesses will be transformed through the use of predictive analytics techniques with surprising […]

During a recent trawl of my archives I happened across an article from DM Review, now Information Management, first published […]

I speak to a lot of people in organisations just starting out on their analytics journey, organisations that have started […]