Inteltrax: Top Stories, April 30 to May 4
May 7, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, where the power lies in the analytic world.
Our story, “Korea Gets Analytic Attention” shows that China doesn’t deserve all the analytic attention when discussing Asian superpowers.
However, that doesn’t mean that China isn’t astoundingly powerful in the big data market. Our story, “Beijing Set to be the new Analytic Wall Street” all but solidifies that notion.
However, nations don’t hold all the strength. “Analytic Partner Power” highlights the growing shift of strong analytic companies teaming together to weather any storm.
Whether nations are on the rise, staying on top or innovative business ideas are helping forge new strengths, we’ll be keeping an eye on everything in the big data analytics sphere. Keep up with the news every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
May 7, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, April 23 to April 27
April 30, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, problems in the data analytics world and how they are overcome.
“The Trouble with Big Data and Social Media” took a look at the overwhelming glut of info brought on by social media and how analytics looks to wrangle it.
“Big Data Law Could Smooth Bad Government PR” actually looks to smooth over a prior problem. The government appears to be making nice with big data companies after threatening its reputation in a data mining suit.
“Big Data Downfall Not Believable” zeroes in on the naysayers of big data and proves them wrong at every turn.
As with any burgeoning industry, there are lows that go along with the highs. Often, like with the above stories, you can learn a lot about how people handle these rough patches. You can bet we’ll be studying these moments along with the highs every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
April 30, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, April 16 to April 20
April 23, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, how three of the biggest supporters of analytics are fairing.
Surprisingly, transportation has taken a shine to analytics, as we discovered in “Transportation Analytics Grows Crucial to Success”.
Not so surprisingly, government spending is leaning heavy on analytics. “Intelligence Community Leads Public Sector Analytics” showed how spy agencies love analytics.
Unfortunately, the one-time titan of analytic love, the medical field, is falling behind, as we learned in “Healthcare Analytics Needs a Boost”.
While there are thousands of industries that utilize big data analytics, these three are probably the most visible. Their successes and failures are important elements of the analytic story and ones we’ll be monitoring daily.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
April 23, 2012
Algorithms Can Deliver Skewed Results
April 18, 2012
After two days of lectures about the power of social media analytics, Stephen E Arnold raised doubts about the reliability of certain analytics outputs. He opined: “Faith in analytics may be misplaced.”
Arnold’s lecture focused on four gaps in social media analytics. He pointed out that many users were unaware of the trade offs in algorithm selection made by vendors’ programmers. Speaking at the Social Media Analytics Summit, he said:
Many companies purchase social media analytics reports without understanding that the questions answered by algorithms may not answer the customer’s actual question.
He continued:
The talk about big data leaves the impression that every item is analyzed and processed. The reality is that sampling methods, like the selection of numerical recipes can have a significant impact on what results become available.
The third gap, he added, “is that smart algorithms display persistence. With smart software, some methods predict a behavior and then look for that behavior because the brute force approach is computationally expensive and adds latency to a system.” He said:
Users assume results are near real time and comprehensive. The reality is that results are unlikely to be real time and built around mathematical methods which value efficiency and cleverness at the expense of more robust analytic methods. The characteristic is more pronounced in user friendly, click here type of systems than those which require to specify a method using SAS or SPSS syntax.”
The final gap is the distortion that affects outputs from “near term, throw forward biases.” Arnold said:
Modern systems are overly sensitive to certain short term content events. This bias is most pronounced when looking for emerging trend data. In these types of outputs the “now” data respond to spikes and users act on identified trends often without appropriate context.
The implication of these gaps is that outputs from some quite sophisticated systems can be misleading or present information as fact when that information has been shaped to a marketer’s purpose.
The Social Media Analytics conference was held in San Francisco, April 17 and 18, 2012. More information about the implications of these gaps may be found at the Augmentext.com Web site.
Donald C Anderson, April 18, 2012,
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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