Use the Sentiment Analysis Luke

December 22, 2015

The newest Star Wars film is out in theaters and any credible Star Wars geek has probably seen the film at least twice.  One theme that continues to be prevalent in the franchise is the use of the mystical, galactic power the Force.  The Force gives the Jedi special powers, such as the ability to read a person’s mind.  Computer Weekly says that data will be able to do the same thing in: “Sentiment Analysis With Hadoop: 5 Steps To Becoming A Mind Reader.”

While the article title reads more like a kit on how to became a psychic cheat, sentiment analysis has proven to predict a person’s actions, especially their shopping habits.  Sentiment analysis is a huge market for companies wanting to learn how to reach their shoppers on a more intimate level, predict trends before they happen, and connect with shoppers in real-time.  Apache Hadoop is a tool used to harness the power of data to make anyone with the right knowledge a mind reader and Twitter is one of the tools used.

First-data is collect, second-label data to create a data dictionary with positive or negative annotations, third-run analytics, fourth-run through a beta phase, and fifth-get the insights. While it sounds easy, the fourth step is going to be the biggest hassle:

“Remember that analytic tools that just look for positive or negative words can be entirely misleading if they miss important context. Typos, intentional misspellings, emoticons and jargon are just few additional obstacles in the task.

Computers also don’t understand sarcasm and irony and as a general rule are yet to develop a sense of humor. Too many of these and you will lose accuracy. It is probably best to address this point by fine-tuning your model.”

The purpose of sentiment analysis is teaching software how to “think” like a human and understand all our illogical ways.  (Hmm…that was a Star Trek reference, whoops!)  Hadoop Apache might not have light sabers or help you find droids, but it does offer to help understand consumers spending habits.   So how about, “These are the greenbacks you have been looking for.”

Whitney Grace, December 22, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph

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