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Course Spotlight: Survival Analysis

Convinced that he, like his father, would die in his 40’s, Winston Churchill lived his early life in a frenetic hurry.  He had participated in four wars on three continents by his mid-20’s, served in multiple ministerial positions by his 30’s, and published 12 books by his 40’s.  Little did he know that more thanContinue reading “Course Spotlight: Survival Analysis”

Entity Resolution and Identifying Bad Guys

Earlier, we described how Jen Golbeck (who teaches Network Analysis at Statistics.com) analyzed Facebook connections to identify fake accounts (the account holders friends all had the same number of friends, which is highly improbable statistically). Network analysis and studying connections lie at the heart of entity resolution. To a sales and marketing person, entity resolutionContinue reading “Entity Resolution and Identifying Bad Guys”

Eli Whitney and Google

This weekend (12/8/2018) marked the 253rd anniversary of the birth of Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin. And 20 years ago, Google received its first big infusions of capital from, among others, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Both Eli Whitney and the Google founders instigated economic revolutions, but also illustrate polar opposite approachesContinue reading “Eli Whitney and Google”

“Money and Brains” and “Furs and Station Wagons”

“Money and Brains” and “Furs and Station Wagons” were evocative customer shorthands that the marketing company Claritas came up with over a half century ago. These names, which facilitated the work of marketers and sales people, were shorthand descriptions of segments of customers identified through statistical cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is also used in marketContinue reading ““Money and Brains” and “Furs and Station Wagons””

Course Spotlight: The Text Analytics Sequence

Text analytics or text mining is the natural extension of predictive analytics, and Statistics.com’s text analytics program starts Feb. 6. Text analytics is now ubiquitous and yields insight in: Marketing: Voice of the customer, social media analysis, churn analysis, market research, survey analysis Business: Competitive intelligence, document categorization, human resources (voice of the employee), recordsContinue reading “Course Spotlight: The Text Analytics Sequence”

Course Spotlight: Constrained Optimization

Say you operate a tank farm (to store and sell fuel). How much of each fuel grade should you buy? You have specified flow and storage capacities, constraints on what types of fuels can be stored in which tanks, prior contractual obligations about minimum monthly deliveries and incoming supplies, plus the opportunity to sell onContinue reading “Course Spotlight: Constrained Optimization”