Columnar DBs: Future of Structured Data

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Contrary to popular perception, structured data analytics still forms a big potion of overall analytics/big data activity. Although unstructured data (text, data with variety etc.) is gaining more and more importance, structure data (transactions, numeric data etc.) still gives a lot of actionable insights for businesses.… Continue reading

Machine learning: what is and what is not

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As elaborated earlier, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are two different things. For a 19th century man even a simple calculating machine could constitute AI. But we all now agree that even more advanced computer algorithms are not machine learning but human intelligence codified into machine.

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Not So Big Data!!!

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Imagine you are an organization sitting on a tons of transactional and other business data which is stored in structured database. Now, you have to analyse it on a daily basis to get vital insights about sales, customers, channels and many other business parameters, what will be your approach?… Continue reading

Why machine learning is worth the hype

Machine learning has seen significant hype in last one year. Applications range from chatbots to image searches to speech recognition to financial market prediction and more! Well the hype is all worth it. (Except may be for financial market prediction. Not may be, definitely.) ML will live upto its hype as:

It reduces friction in customer interactions.… Continue reading

Story of Artificial Intelligence

The history of Artificial Intelligence is as fascinating as the future it promises. For many, AI is a recent phenomenon, rising with the rise of connected world. But research and speculation in AI have been much older than most believe. Automaton have been described since antiquity.… Continue reading

Column stores: The future of analytics

The most common myth pertain to BigData is considering BigData and Hadoop as synonymous. Data in most business cases is structured and small enough to fit in a hard disc. In very extreme cases (think FB/Google level) is the data larger than something that cannot fit into a hard-disc.… Continue reading

Death of OLAP cubes

At one point analytics meant MIS and MIS meant OLAP Cubes. For the uninitiated, OLAP is online analytics processing and OLAP cubes are aggregated cuts of various business KPIs across different time and business factor dimensions. A simple example could be sales across different products, geographies and different months.… Continue reading

Functional Thinking for Analytics and Machine Learning

Object oriented (OO) has dominated programming design patterns for quite sometime now. In the initial stages of web development and mobile apps, the main requirement was to extract, store and present data. OO is considered ideal for this. AS move away from basic data representation and expect more from computing i.e.… Continue reading

Self Services Sales Analytics

Typical problems of sales analytics can be easily solved using self service analytics.  The broad demands from sales analytics are:

  • Business intelligence
  • Discovery: Analytics of trends and causation analysis
  • Predictive analytics at overall level
  • Customer level descriptive and predictive analytics

All of these need to be delivered in a timely fashion to the business user.… Continue reading

Strategic, Tactical and Operational Insighting

Decisions in organizations are made at strategic, tactical and operational level. Analytics for generating insights to take decisions also need to be done at these three levels. The difference between these three will be the time-frame and scope of the impact of decisions.… Continue reading

Strategic, Tactical and Operational Insighting

Decisions in organizations are made at strategic, tactical and operational level. Analytics for generating insights to take decisions also need to be done at these three levels. The difference between these three will be the time-frame and scope of the impact of decisions.… Continue reading

Robo-Data-Scientists

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This cartoon was drawn by Jon Carter.

Data scientists and analytics professionals have been the new supermen. But the party didnt last long as automation tools will replace manual data analysis soon. The cartoon was inspired by a recent post: Six Very Clear Signs That Your Job Is Due To Be Automated.… Continue reading