Simpson’s Paradox and Safety Analytics
We previously wrote about Goodhart's law and how it poses a challenge to analytics over a period of time in the sense that "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." But that is not…
First Analytics at the UTA Oil and Gas Safety and Health Conference
We will be presenting at the 2021 UTA Oil & Gas Safety and Health Conference. Our session is entitled, “Add Predictive Analytics to Your Safety Management System.” The conference is a hybrid in-person and virtual event. It will be held…
Productionizing AI in Manufacturing Operations: A Symphony Industrial AI Webinar
First Analytics CEO Michael Thompson recently participated in a webinar hosted by Steve Barnett, of Symphony Industrial AI, a First Analytics partner. We invite you to view the recording, where you will learn the key considerations in moving from a…
Predictive Maintenance Does Not End With Predicting the Maintenance
It may be said that predictive maintenance is the poster child for the "analytics of things." Preventing down time and reducing maintenance costs has been a successful use of data science for a long time. But sometimes there is…
Update: Bewildering Technology Landscape — it’s Worse Now!
Over four years ago we commented on "bewildering technology landscapes". Matt Turck from Firstmark Capital has produced these landscape charts for a number of years. And these can be "eye charts" in the sense that, visually, it's a myriad of logos packed…
Before Data Science: Statistics
This post is a companion to our previous post, Beyond Data Science: Industrial Engineering. The notion in that article was that there is more to analytics than just data science, the specific case being industrial engineering. For a long time…
Beyond Data Science: Industrial Engineering
Much attention has been heaped upon the data science profession for about a decade now, including by our own chairman, Tom Davenport, who called it "the sexiest job of the 21st Century". Well-known hierarchies of types of analytics generally show…
We Need People Analytics Now More Than Ever
With the easing of the pandemic we are beginning to see increased employee turnover in what some are calling the "Turnover Tsunami" Indeed, data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is beginning to show very early signs of a…
What Analytics Says About the Railroad Industry’s Ability to Further Improve Operating Ratio
As a heavy industry, railroads seek to appeal to the finance community by focusing on metrics that speak to the company’s efficient utilization of its assets. A key metric is Operating Ratio, which is defined as operating expenses as a…
What We Learned from Modeling the Pandemic
Data scientists at First Analytics were among many in the profession who were pressed into service to address the pandemic. Our chairman, Tom Davenport, recently published several stories showing how various companies grappled with the radical change in their business.…