Book Image

Analytics: How to Win with Intelligence

By : John Thompson, Shawn P. Rogers
Book Image

Analytics: How to Win with Intelligence

By: John Thompson, Shawn P. Rogers

Overview of this book

Today, business is moving into an era where information is more valuable than services. Organizations that connect information with their products will have a huge advantage. This book helps people understand the power of data analytics and explains how some of the tools available can be applied to a wide range of applications. It begins with a brief history of analytics and explains how it all began. You'll learn about several common analytical approaches and the tools that data scientists use to analyze data. You'll gain insight into some staffing models, technologies, organizational structures, and analytical approaches used in the previous two eras of analytics. As you progress through the chapters, you'll also get a glimpse into the future of the analytical marketplace. After reading this book, you will be able to help your team deploy analytical elements into your operations and become competitive in your business.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Foreword by Tom Davenport

“Analytics” defined

As of late, the word “analytics” has been stretched and applied to many areas. For our purposes, we describe analytics as a continuum having the following three characteristics. Presented in order of increasing complexity and sophistication:

  • Descriptive – These are analytics that provide descriptions of data and phenomena represented by the data. People are generally familiar with descriptive analytics: averages, distributions, clusters, categories, and so on.
  • Predictive – These are analytics that predict what could happen given certain conditions. The algorithms review past cases and learn, or they create examples that can be compared to current datasets to obtain a prediction of the probability of what might be (or will be) happening. These algorithms, which are less familiar to laypeople, include machine learning, artificial intelligence, neural networks, cognitive computing, and so on.
  • Prescriptive ...