Churn analytics

Until now, in this book, we have discussed multiple important machine learning concepts and algorithms and their implementation/usage in Mahout. We also saw multiple examples of using machine learning algorithms with Mahout. We are now going to focus on end-to-end case studies, keeping a specific business problem in mind. This chapter and the next will help you put the pieces together and get an overview of a complete analytics project. We will first look at churn prediction.

The goal of churn analytics is to understand the primary drivers to churn and predict churn. Churn can have a very specific meaning depending upon the industry or even the organization we are talking about, but in general it is related to the extension of the contract between a service provider and a subscriber. The contract is valid until the service term period, and then is up for renewal at the end of the contract term period. For example, postpaid telecom subscribers renew their contract with the...