I was reading about this very interesting research which studied decision makers’ use of data feeds having varying frequencies. As illogical is it may sound, in some environments real-time data could hamper decision making and/or lead to a wrong decision.
At first thought this seems unbelievable; until you realize how much data the human mind can comprehend and process. It really does not take much data to fog up our cerebral processing.
Additionally, with real-time data we can loose the context of the data points. Dips, valleys, peaks, plateaus are all only found with historical views. To predict a dip with most real-time data feeds is more like gambling. As the researchers mention in many cases real-time data turns into noise. In many of our cases the real-time data is more of a technological gimmick or a visually stunning graph. More often than not when we hear a client request real-time data processing for an analytic solution we know that we need to drill-down a bit more and figure out the true needs and requirements. It is nice that know that some researchers finally spent some time determining why so many of our real-time systems are not useful or helpful.
“In many situations, real-time data comes in on a continuous basis, and then you, as a decision maker, have to decide which data is information and which is pure noise,” says Jayashankar M. Swaminathan, Kay and Van Weatherspoon Distinguished Professor of Operations, Technology and Innovation Management at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “That’s not an easy task, which is what this study shows.”
Lurie and Swaminathan found that participants who received reports and placed orders daily had lower profits than their peers who got reports once or twice weekly. To put it another way: Even though all the participants received the same granularity of information — daily sales — those who got the information every day, as opposed to every three or six days, made worse decisions. This was particularly true when there was a high variance in actual demand.
As I learn, experiment and interact with the twitter world I have noticed several things: - Interacting with the twitter users is like a never-ending first day of high-school. You are always scanning the crowds and trying to analyze the various cliques and finding where you fit in. - the etiquette is evolving and varies. This is subtle but obvious after a week of using twitter. Like a cocktail party one should be open, helpful and positive before interacting directly. I still have not figured out the customs for following and reciprocating a follow. Is there one? - the culture is “strong”. Maybe a better word would be active. A quick search of Google shows lots of interest in understanding the twitterverse but this one caught my eye and is worth following:
I think it begins with the community. Unlike blogs or social networking sites, Twitter seems real. I know intimate details about people on Twitter that I’d never know from reading their blogs. I’ve met their girlfriends on Twitter. I’ve chatted with people about their feelings over the Chinese Olympics. I’ve suggested a method to get baby snot off a Palm Treo. In other words, it’s a lot like what I do in real life. Conversation is about give and take. You talk, I respond, you listen, you respond, etc. Twitter does that on a massive scale. It’s possible to track a hundred conversations or more. There’s a sense of fellowship on Twitter. This isn’t like a chat room, where there’s a group conversation.
I found this fascinating quote today which adds more energy to our ambitions for creating a platform agnostic communications tool for use by marketers to manage their digital channels.
If individuals with one identity need these types of solutions then surely a savvy enterprise having multiple identies, communication streams and marketing channels need something even more scalable?:
The folks over at Ping.fm designed a site where you have the ability to update your status on dozens of different social networking sites. I use Gmail for just about everything and Ping.fm allows you to add its updater to your Google Chat list. So anytime I want to update my status, I click on the chat and type is my update. A second later I get a response that my status have been updated. If I were to log in to all the different accounts I have and manually update my status it would probably take 10-15 minutes (given I don’t get sidetracked being on those sites).Marketing.fm, Nov 2008
The forward thinking team at facebook is offering Facebook Connect. Connect enriches non-facebook sites and applications by empowering their users to invite, interact and communicate with their facebook network through the site. Using this technology a site could allow users to query and invite their Facebook friends to review a sale or product or to discuss a site’s conversation or technology.
What a mess. According to a Wired article Apple’s insistence on being the gate keeper to the sacred garden that is the iPhone is the reason why Flash and Flex may never be an option. One of the main reasons is that a Flash application could just be embedded inside a html page and therefore used on the iPhone, thereby circumventing the traditional and tightly controlled App Store. The terms of service are also pretty specific about this: “An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise,” reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement, which was recently published on WikiLeaks. “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”
Although Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone, Apple is unlikely ever to permit it to appear in the handset’s App Store, no matter how much customers want it.
“I’m pretty skeptical that Flash could be
implemented in a way that doesn’t violate the Terms of Service of the
developer’s agreement,” said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular Tap Tap Revenge iPhone game.
Not too surprising and maybe a sign of the times as leaders are realizing that they need more insight into the gears of their business. Other items on the list include: Cloud computing, Green, Unified Communications, Social Software and Networking, Virtualization.
Business Intelligence.Business Intelligence (BI), the top technology priority in Gartner’s 2008 CIO survey, can have a direct positive impact on a company’s business performance, dramatically improving its ability to accomplish its mission by making smarter decisions at every level of the business from corporate strategy to operational processes. BI is particularly strategic because it is directed toward business managers and knowledge workers who make up the pool of thinkers and decision makers that are tasked with running, growing and transforming the business. Tools that let these users make faster, better and more-informed decisions are particularly valuable in a difficult business environment.
Show world is providing a great tool to visualize the scale of global metrics such as life-death, population, marketing etc. Pretty insightful and a good example of how seeing the complete data landscape can change your perception.
Here the map is showing oil metrics but the actual application allows for the display of several other interesting metrics including those related to life-death, entertainment, marketing and population.
The Role of Technology in an Uncertain Economy interview between PressPass and Microsoft CIO. In the interview Tony Scott provides an interesting perspective on how the analytics market, specifically visualization tools are useful and discusses appropriate use of technology in general. A good short read.
PressPass: People talk a lot about “business intelligence.” What’s happening on that front?
For example, new analytical technologies make it possible to mine audio and video streams for relevant data that can be used to extend the power of traditional business intelligence tools. Today visualization applications can help users see patterns in complicated environments at a glance. And as computers continue to become more powerful and software more sophisticated, we’re seeing the emergence of affordable simulation solutions that can mimic complex systems—both natural and manmade—enabling companies to test theories and more accurately assess risks and opportunities without committing significant capital and employee resources.
I have posted a bunch of widgets so far but MSNBC has really outdone themselves in their Election Day widget offerings! They provided widget solutions for just about every social network and blog solution out there. Way to show off MSNBC.
Here is one example:
A larger version can be found after the Read On link.
Is today fun for analytics or what!
There are numerous solutions for tracking the national results but what about the local level? For example a good friend of mine Dan Urban, (and somebody who I think actually cares about the common person and business) is running for Ohio State Representative (57th District) but how can I monitor his results? For that matter what are the options for monitoring state level elections?
Actually there are some pretty nice solutions. Click Read On for specifics.
We work at Sherlock Informatics and are a group of data-heads, or using the more professional title: knowledge engineers... We may have coined that term. Regardless of the term of the day, in the end we play with data: move it, transform it, roll it up, break it down, munge it. You name it we do it and we do it to help create knowledge management and business intelligence tools (analytics is the phrase we like).
20 Nov 08 | 
