Ins ide story
Slaying sacred cows
Slaying metaphorical sacred cows is
hard work, but that’s exactly what Will
Towler does in this month’s lead feature article (“10 myths of analytics and
insights”). Among the myths Towler debunks: “Knowledge is power,” “People
are rational,” “You can’t manage what you
can’t measure,” “Sound analytics drive
sound decision-making” and my personal
favorite, “Great insights sell themselves.”
Any analytics professional who has
ever bumped up against corporate decision-makers has been there, done that,
been dismissed, picked up the pieces
and analyzed what went wrong.
By definition, metaphorical sacred
cows are “considered to be exempt from
criticism or questioning,” so they must be
approached with caution. Yet Towler not
only takes them on, he offers some valuable takeaways. For more click here.
Speaking of measuring, Mu Sigma
manager Kshira Saagar provides five
fundamental measures that can serve as
quick-wins to analyze your social media
karma. Saagar notes that while almost
every organization spends lots of financial and human resources trying to make
sense of their social media actions (post,
tweet, blog, ping, upload, etc.) and reactions (like, share, re-tweet, favorite, reblog and download), about half of chief
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marketing officers are unable to quantify
social media impact on their companies.
Warns Saagar: “In this interconnected
world, a small social media ripple can
have the impact of a tsunami on the eventual sales bottom line.”
Harrison Schramm, CAP, author of
“The Five-Minute Analyst” column, turned
his textual data tools loose on an unusual
target this issue: presidents’ State of the
Union addresses over the years. Schramm used a method call the “FleschKincaid Grade Level” to calculate the
readability and complexity of first-term
State of the Union addresses by Presidents Madison, Lincoln, Clinton, Bush
(George W.) and Obama. To see how
they graded out, click here.
In case you were wondering, the “CAP”
after Schramm’s name indicates he’s a
Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®).
Developed by INFORMS, the CAP program includes an exam that is administered at more than 700 testing locations
around the world. The CAP program was
recently listed No. 1 by CIO magazine in
an article titled, “11 Big Data Certifications
That Will Pay Off.” For more on the CAP
story, click here.
– Peter Horner, editor
peter.horner@ mail.informs.org
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