The suggestion to "Think Big" continued, so Scott Laningham and I sat down very early this morning with Nate Silver, blogger and author of the now New York Times bestseller, The Signal and the Noise. (You can read the review of the book in the Times here.)
Nate, who is a youngish 34, has become our leading statistician through his innovative analyses of political polling, but made his original name by building a widely-acclaimed baseball statistical analysis system called "PECOTA."
Today, Nate runs the award-winning political Website FiveThirtyEight.com, which is now published in The New York Times and which has made Nate the public face of statistical analysis and political forecasting.
In his book, the full title of which is The Signal and The Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail -- But Some Don't, Silver explores how data-based predictions underpin a growing sector of critical fields, from political polling to weather forecasting to the stock market to chess to the war on terror.
In the book, Nate poses some key questions, including what kind of predictions can we trust, and are the "predicters" using reliable methods? Also, what sorts of things can, and cannot, be predicted?
In our conversation in the greenroom just prior to his keynote at Information On Demand 2012 earlier today, Scott and I probed along a number of these vectors, asking Nate about the importance of prediction in big-data, statistical influence on sports and player predictions (à la Moneyball), how large organizations can improve their predictive capabilities, and much more.
It was a refreshing and eye-opening interview, and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as Scott and I enjoyed conducting it!
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You only need take one quick glance around the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit at the Gaylord Opryland facility here in Nashville to recognize how busy the Smarter Commerce customer reference team has been these past few months in anticipation of the event.
In this morning's general session here at the IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit in Nashville, our emcee Jay Baer said what I've been thinking for the past several days: We're in a giant terrarium.
Ushering in a new era of cognitive computing systems, IBM announced today the IBM Watson Engagement Advisor, a technology breakthrough that allows brands to crunch big data in record time to transform the way they engage clients in key functions such as customer service, marketing, and sales.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
Elizabeth Pizzinato, SVP of marketing and communications at Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, calls content marketing "the new black" and explains how her brand engages its target audience.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Big-data has become a big point of emphasis for many businesses. While the technology is available to deploy these applications, the needed personnel often is not. As a result, analytic engineers' salaries have blown past the six-figure mark, and hiring these experts has become a challenge for IT managers.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling of customer behavior to convert more site visitors into leads, says Brian Baron, director of business analytics, in an interview at the Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The medical instruments manufacturer looks to metrics to quantify its social business engagement, according to Mary Maida, Medtronic lead information solutions manager. Internet Evolution editor in chief Mitch Wagner interviewed Maida at the E2 Innovate conference.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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