This is a re-post of an article originally by First Analytics Chairman Tom Davenport. More of Tom's articles can be found here. One of the key attributes of the lean startup approach popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries is…
Goodhart's Law says that, "any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." A generalized way of saying it is, "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good…
In early 2020 the Federal Railroad Administration issued a final rule - 49 CFR Part 271 - to help railroads establish a "Risk Reduction Program" to improve the safety of its operations. Part of the rule states, “RRP is a…
Analytics thought leader and chairman of First Analytics, Tom Davenport, has published The AI Advantage: How to Put the Artificial Intelligence Revolution to Work. This is a practical follow-up to his previous book, "Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers…
The sharing of techniques and methodologies across industries can produce advances in successful applications, not only for the practice of analytics as a whole, but for individual firms. Practitioners in the areas of marketing and supply chain analytics, for example,…
One might assume that data generated by sensors and event recorders would be clean because after all, these are precise instruments, right? Alas, the analytics of things suffers from the age-old challenge of data quality. This screenshot from SAS Visual Analytics show that for…
The hot field of analytics is rife with hype and its associated buzzwords, such as “big data” and “data science.” Some have pointed out that, while the world fixates on big data, there are opportunities to be had with the small data…