The Economist's Schumpeter column recently cautioned that Research shows that firms ignore passionate consumers at their peril These "superconsumers" represent 10% of all customers, but are responsible for 30-70% of sales, an even greater share of profits and almost all consumer insights. In addition, they influence their social circle with their unbridled enthusiasm. The article offers … [Read more...]
Is wrong better than nothing?
Last week Italians voted "No" to constitutional reform. The Economist reports that The 20-point margin of defeat—--60% to 40%—--was almost double what pollsters had foreseen. Yet again, polling has failed. However, come the French and German elections next year who doubts that we'll continue to celebrate or denounce each poll result with partisan fervor? There's a hunger for this kind of … [Read more...]
All maps are wrong
Maps of the world are a perfect example of how difficult it is to prevent bias creeping into your modeling. People always have a perspective. And it's difficult to eliminate or compensate for it. Vox have a great video that discusses the difficulty of producing an accurate map of the world. It starts with the presenter slicing up an inflatable globe and trying to spread it out across the … [Read more...]
Supporting data users
A critical, but overlooked, area of data science is linking analytics to action. Decision-makers must Understand the information being presented to them Have confidence in the analysis Be able to place information in the context of the decisions they are required to take Understand how to apply the information to make better, more informed, decisions Too much focus has been placed on the needs … [Read more...]
Scaling knowledge
The data team at Airbnb have written an interesting article on how to manage data science research as you bring more and more people on board. They developed an internal process and tool based on five key tenets Reproducibility---There should be no opportunity for code forks. The entire set of queries, transforms, visualizations, and write-up should be contained in each contribution and be up … [Read more...]