Applied Analytics

Articles
The signal and the noise, Ludwig Siegele (Economist, Mar 2016)
This video article examines the use of technology and analytics in politics. It discusses the use of data to target potential voters and increase votes for presidential election candidates, as well as the use of social media to grow political movements and the use of data to increase power for authoritarian political regimes.
 
Transforming into an analytics-driven insurance carrier, Ari Chester, Richard Clarke, and Ari Libarikian (McKinsey, Feb 2016)
A McKinsey and Company article which describes four stages of analytics integration within an insurance company; Building insights, Capturing value, Achieving scale and Becoming an analytics-driven organization.

Truly Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools You Can Use Today, Bob Gourley (CTOvision, Dec 2015)
An article listing and providing links to a range of different Artificial Intelligence tools already available on the market, including AI for developers, healthcare, robotics, space and marketing and customer interaction.

How Uber uses Spark and Hadoop to Optimize Customer Experience, Alex Woodie (Datanami, Oct 2015)
This article discusses various software solutions and methods that Uber has adopted in overcoming issues relating to collecting and analysing the very large car trip datasets it collects on a daily basis.

Forget big data: what businesses really want is simple and easy, Ben Rossi (Information age, Mar 2015)
This article discusses some of the most common information challenges such as delivering self-service reporting and analysis, reporting and analysing across multiple systems and unlocking data buried in systems. It suggests that in many cases, businesses reporting should be focused on fast, easy, self-service access to data rather than “high end, hi-tech, hype” like big data, mobile BI, predictive analytics and data visualisation.

 

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Sports Analytics Drop College Football Soft-Tissue Injuries by 88%, (iCrunchdata News, Apr 2015)
This article outlines the use of software package Catapult Sports, which combines wearable technology with data analytics. It includes case studies of sporting groups which have achieved successful outcomes through the use of the product, including US NBA, NFL and college football teams, and in Australia, the AFL and some high schools.

Big Data is Finally Coming to Eductaion: Here's What We've Learned So Far, Sameer Bhatia (edukwest, Mar 2015)
This article examines uses of big data within the education sector, including analysing how students learn best, what drives drop-out rates and when students are having problems. Privacy is discussed as a particular issue when using data collected for younger children.

How Successful Hospitals Start to Tackle Big Data Analytics, Jennifer Bresnick (healthitanalytics.com, Mar 2015)
An article about the use of data in hospitals to improve clinical and operational outcomes. It discusses how evolved data analytics is for different sized hospitals and lists common problems encountered such as combining disparate data sources, managing volume of data, cultural resistance, defining what data needed to be collected and lack of industry wide data standards.

Touchpoint using artificial intelligence to defuse anger, Mitchell Bingemann (The Australian, 2015)

An article which discusses the use of a machine learning research project to analyse why telco and insurance customers reach breaking point, to enable these companies to improve customer service before customers reach this point of no return.

How Big Data Can Protect Health Care, David A. Steinberg (Huffington Post, 2015)

An article which outlines the use of data analytics to prevent health care fraud.

Tesco uses supply chain analytics to save £100m a year, Lindsay Clark (computerweekly, Apr 2013)
An article which describes the ways analytics has been used by US retailer Tesco to improve their profitability. It describes the use of analytics to optimise stock levels, predict product demand and analyse the likely impact of new ideas when they’re implemented.

Pursuit of a Career in Sports Analytics: Interview w/ Bill Moreau, US Olympic Committee, Anmol Rajpurohit (kdnuggets)
This interview with Dr Bill Moreau, head of sports medicine at United States Olympic Committee, includes discussion on the challenges in applying data analytics to sports and includes practical advice to beginners in the field of Sports Analytics.

Audio and Video
Data For Good: How big data is saving lives
Short YouTube clip which discusses the use of information to improve behaviour and health, not just of individuals, but of society at large.