The Data Mining Trap

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In a post titled Data Mining – A Cautionary Tale, I share the idea that data mining can be dangerous by sharing the story of Cornell’s Brian Wansink, who has had multiple papers retracted due to various data mining methods that aren’t quite ethical (or even correct). Recently, Gary Smith over at Wired wrote an article … Read more

This one skill will make you a data science rockstar

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Want to be a data science rockstar? of course you do! Sorry for the clickbait headline, but I wanted to reach as many people as I can with this important piece of information. Want to know what the ‘one skill’ is? It isn’t python or R or Spark or some other new technology or platform.  … Read more

You Need a Chief Data Officer. Here’s Why.

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Big data has moved from buzzword to being a part of everyday life within enterprise organizations. An IDG survey reports that 75% of enterprise organizations have deployed or plan to deploy big data projects. The challenge now is capturing strategic value from that data and delivering high-impact business outcomes. That’s where a Chief Data Officer … Read more

Beware the Models

Beware the Models

“But….all of our models have accuracies above 90%…our system should be working perfectly!” Those were the words spoken by the CEO of a mid-sized manufacturing company. These comments were made during a conversation about their various forecasting models and the poor performance of those models. This CEO had spent about a million dollars over the … Read more

Big Data Roadmap – A roadmap for success with big data

Big Data Roadmap

I’m regularly asked about how to get started with big data. My response is always the same: I give them my big data roadmap for success.  Most organizations want to jump in a do something ‘cool’ with big data. They want to do a project that brings in new revenue or adds some new / … Read more