Inteltrax: Top Stories, December 26 to December 30
January 2, 2012
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, ways in which some are misusing big data analytics in the market today.
One story, our feature this week, “Real Estate Market Missing Out on Analytic Help” detailed the many ways in which the housing market could be aided by analytics, but is not taking advantage of.
One of the most important stories we’ve written was “Consumer Analytics Not a Strong Investment” which helps analytic software buyers avoid limited programs that will be no help to them.
Finally, we focused on how a lot of cloud analytic offerings don’t make security and customer service a priority in our story: “Accountability Should Be Top Priority for Cloud Analytics.”
Usually, we focus on the uplifting, exciting side of this growing market. However, big data analytics also has its downside, which deserves some light. We try and keep our coverage balanced, in order to give our readers the best overview.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
January 02, 2012
Inteltrax: Top Stories, December 19 to December 23, 2011
December 26, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, watching things moving and traveling with the aid of big data analytics.
Our story, “Unstructured Social Data is a Gold Mine for Travel Sites” shed some light on how many travel sites like Travelocity are utilizing big data to aide customers.
Similarly, our story “Airports and Analytics Grow Closer Together” showed how the complex world of airports are getting less cumbersome by sorting their unstructured data.
Our third story deals more with our voices traveling, “Telecom Attracting Big Data Heavyweights,” shows how phone companies are embracing this technology to improve customer experience.
Clearly, it’s a growing time for travel and analytics. We’re keeping a close eye on the developments and you can be assured that we’ll keep you informed as things change.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
December 26, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, December 12 to December 16
December 19, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the issue of change in the analytic world—for the better, for the worse and everything in between.
One example of change came from our story, “Data Mining Changing Scientific Thought” shows how the way scientists think is being streamlined by analytics.
On the other hand, “ManTech has Uphill Climb with Intelligence Analytics,” shows that not all change looks promising, like one company’s new focus on intelligence.
And some change, well, we’re just not sure how it’ll pan out, like with the story “Predicting the Ponies is Just Unstructured Data” which exposes how the gambling industry could be changed by analytic tools. For the better or worse is up for debate.
Change, in any aspect of life, is inevitable. However, the world of big data analytics seems more susceptible than most. And we couldn’t be happier, as we watch the unexpected turns these changes bring to the industry every day.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting http://www.inteltrax.com/
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
Predictions on Big Data Miss the Real Big Trend
December 18, 2011
Athena the goddess of wisdom does not spend much time in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I don’t think she’s ever visited. However, I know that she is not hanging out at some of the “real journalists’” haunts. I zipped through “Big Data in 2012: Five Predictions”. These are lists which are often assembled over a lunch time chat or a meeting with quite a few editorial issues on the agenda. At year’s end, the prediction lunch was a popular activity when I worked in New York City, which is different in mental zip from rural Kentucky.
The write up churns through some ideas that are evident when one skims blog posts or looks at the conference programs for “big data.” For example—are you sitting down?—the write up asserts: “Increased understanding of and demand for visualization.” There you go. I don’t know about you, but when I sit in on “intelligence” briefings in the government or business environment, I have been enjoying the sticky tarts of visualization for years. Nah, decades. Now visualization is a trend? Helpful, right?
Let me identify one trend which is, in my opinion, an actual big deal. Navigate to “The Maximal Information Coefficient.” You will see a link and a good summary of a statistical method which allows a person to process “big data” in order to determine if there are gems within. More important, the potential gems pop out of a list of correlations. Why is this important? Without MIC methods, the only way to “know” what may be useful within big data was to run the process. If you remember guys like Kolmogorov, the “we have to do it because it is already as small as it can be” issue is an annoying time consumer. To access the original paper, you will need to go to the AAAS and pay money.
The abstract for “Detecting Novel Associates in Large Data Sets by David N. Reshef1,2,3,*,†, Yakir A. Reshef, Hilary K. Finucane, Sharon R. Grossman, Gilean McVean, Peter Turnbaugh, Eric S. Lander, Michael Mitzenmacher, Pardis C. Sabet, Science, December 16, 2011 is:
Identifying interesting relationships between pairs of variables in large data sets is increasingly important. Here, we present a measure of dependence for two-variable relationships: the maximal information coefficient (MIC). MIC captures a wide range of associations both functional and not, and for functional relationships provides a score that roughly equals the coefficient of determination (R^2) of the data relative to the regression function. MIC belongs to a larger class of maximal information-based nonparametric exploration (MINE) statistics for identifying and classifying relationships. We apply MIC and MINE to data sets in global health, gene expression, major-league baseball, and the human gut microbiota and identify known and novel relationships.
Stating a very interesting although admittedly complex numerical recipe in a simple way is difficult, I think this paragraph from “The Maximal Information Coefficient” does a very good job:
The authors [Reshef et al] go on showing that that the MIC (which is based on “gridding” the correlation space at different resolutions, finding the grid partitioning with the largest mutual information at each resolution, normalizing the mutual information values, and choosing the maximum value among all considered resolutions as the MIC) fulfills this requirement, and works well when applied to several real world datasets. There is a MINE Website with more information and code on this algorithm, and a blog entry by Michael Mitzenmacher which might also link to more information on the paper in the future.
Another take on the MIC innovation appears in “Maximal Information Coefficient Teases Out Multiple Vast Data Sets”. Worth reading as well.
Forbes will definitely catch up with this trend in a few years. For now, methods such as MIC point the way to making “big data” a more practical part of decision making. Yep, a trend. Why? There’s a lot of talk about “big data” but most organizations lack the expertise and the computational know how to perform meaningful analyses. Similar methods are available from Digital Reasoning and the Google love child Recorded Future. Palantir is more into the make pictures world of analytics. For me, MIC and related methods are not just a trend; they are the harbinger of processes which make big data useful, not a public relations, marketing, or PowerPoint chunk of baloney. Honk.
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, a company located where high school graduates actually can do math.
Hewlett Packard Lusts after Big Data
December 16, 2011
As Web users continue creating structured and unstructured data at higher volumes than ever before we are starting to need technology to analyze it.
According to the Dec 1, Front Line article “HP Predicts 50 Zettabytes of Data will be Created Annually by 2020,” Hewlett Packard (HP) predicts that by 2020, fifty zettabytes (fifty billion terrabytes) of data will be created every year. This will present a major challenge for businesses.
Prith Banerjee, head of HP Labs, said at the firm’s Discover event:
By 2020 there could be as many as 10 billion people on the planet and some four billion of these will be online interacting on social networks. While now there are 2.5 million tweets per day this will rise to tens of millions.There’s also going to be a huge increase of sensors on the network measuring everything from temperature to heart monitoring. We expect there to be one trillion sensors by 2020.
HP Labs is currently working to address this issue by investigating technology that tracks a variety of complex events which must be correlated so that patterns can be detected. It could contextually analyze what customers say on twitter a mere ten seconds after the tweet is sent.
What will Autonomy’s role in this big data love fest be? Stay tuned.
Jasmine Ashton, December 16, 2011
SAS Creates Customer-Centric Analytics Software
December 4, 2011
Business analytics and software firm SAS recently unveiled the Phillippine’s first customer intelligence software that can analyze data from online conversations and relationships in social networking sites.
The SAS Customer Intelligence, includes a range of applications that allow firms to better understand their customer base. These include: customer analytics, forecasting, and credit-scoring to choreographing multi-channel marketing strategies and gathering marketing data from social media.
NewsBytes Phillippines reported on the new software in the November 25 article “SAS Rolls Out First BI Software For Social Media in PH.”
the article states:
“SAS global senior product marketing manager Ken King said in a press briefing that the new software is a comprehensive tool that can monitor and analyze data from social media – a capability that ordinary statistics services such as Facebook analytics cannot provide.”
Customer decisioning is an important focus area for any business so I’m glad to see SAS’ investment in this area. This software will allow organizations to gain deeper customer insight, create and manage a customer-centric data repository, predict customer behavior, and give accurate customer profiles.
Jasmine Ashton, December 04, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, November 21 to November 25
November 28, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, the highs and lows of recent analytics news.
On the high side, was our story “Speech Analytics Market Approaches Billions” that chronicled the success of applying unstructured big data analytic techniques to recorded speech, such as in call centers.
On the low side, we found “Mobile BI Takes a Surprising Misstep” explores how the once bustling mobile BI market recently took a hit.
And somewhere in the middle, we found “In-Memory Databases Cause a Stir” attempted to draw the line between traditionalist and futurists of analytics.
It’s a wild ride every week in the world of big data analytics. Sure things go bust, underdogs appear from nowhere and divisions are drawn. Stay tuned to see where it all leads.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting www.inteltrax.com
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
November 28, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, November 14 to November 18
November 21, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, Some exciting nes among our favorite providers.
The most interesting tale came from, “Tibco and Digital Reasoning Give A Glimpse at Operational Thinking,” which looked at the minds of the CEOs of these exciting organizations.
In “IBM Ready to Take Analytics Seriously” we discovered some interesting news that shows the computing giant is pushing all its chips into the analytic pile.
However, our story “Qlik Tech’s Collaborative BI is Too Much of a Good Thing” shows that too many cooks can spoil one’s analytic soup.
Here’s just another quick sampling of the many ways big data analytics is changing. And we’re following the biggest names in big data everyday, noting the moves and blunders therein.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting http://www.inteltrax.com/
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax.
Selventa and Linguamatics Team Up to Mine Scientific Research Details
November 14, 2011
At the end of last month, Cambridge MA based Selventa, a personalized healthcare company, announced that they were teaming up with text mining UK based software firm Linguamatics to extract complex life science knowledge in a computable, structured, biological expression language (BEL) format that can be used to interpret large-scale experimental data in the context of published literature.
In a November 7, Fierce Biotech post “Selventa and Linguamatics Team on Mining Details in Journals” David de Graaf, president and CEO of Selventa, was quoted saying:
“Collaborating with Linguamatics will enable rapid yet comprehensive investigation of new areas of biology by extracting computable knowledge from unstructured text. This will lead to innovation on many fronts, such as next generation sequencing, where well-structured information for reasoning has been limited.”
The technology created from this unique partnership could save Scientists countless hours that they previously spent poring over scientific texts or doing manual database searches to get to the findings they need for studies. You’ve gotta love technological innovation.
Jasmine Ashton, November 14, 2011
Inteltrax: Top Stories, October 31 to November 4
November 7, 2011
Inteltrax, the data fusion and business intelligence information service, captured three key stories germane to search this week, specifically, its impact on businesses and nations around the globe.
A good overview of this topic was our article, “Businesses Prepare for Analytic Bandwagon” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2674 which showed proof that businesses across all industries and sizes are latching onto the power of big data analytics to improve their bottom lines.
More specifically, we saw its impact on a tiny nation in the story, “New Zealand Stepping onto World BI Stage,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2687 which showed how that country’s passion for big data with companies like Right Hemisphere and ComOps.
We issued a firm warning to any business trying to get something for nothing in “Freemium BI Software Not the Total Answer to Analytic Woes,” http://inteltrax.com/?p=2694 which warned that free BI tools are no match for the investment of proven analytic tools.
This is a wide swath of analytic focus, but each well worth the attention. Whether it puts a small country on the tech map, offers companies chances to get more competitive or also tempts budgets with worthless freebees, IntelTrax is watching the pulse of the industry to keep readers informed.
Follow the Inteltrax news stream by visiting
Patrick Roland, Editor, Inteltrax
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