My notes from the 2012 O+A Sessions

These are my notes from Scott Friesen’s talk, “Analytics, Through the Trivium”, where he took a look at what Best Buy is doing with big data, and what all companies should be doing to help understand what the future will bring.

Trivium = three pieces of learning – Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.

• Grammar = the constituent pieces of a thing, the elementary pieces of a thing.
• Grammar can include parts of sentence, or the building blocks of arithmetic, or the foundational truths of anything else.
• Logic = Broader themes
• Rhetoric = Expression of thought patterns

Analytics = Three things:

1. Reporting – The grammar of analytics
2. Statistics and forecasting – The logic of analytics
3. Predictive Modeling and optimization – The rhetoric of analytics
   • Optimization uses mathematics to figure out how to use limited resources to the most efficient way.

Analytics is a gerund. (Gerund = Verb used as a noun)

• Analytics is a thing you do and a thing you have.
• It’s taking something that you break down to its constituent pieces and looking at the relationship between them.
• Some can be correlative and some are causative.

The ability to store the data we are creating is being outpaced by our ability to create it.

The problem isn’t how to get the right answer – that parts easy. The problem is finding the right question to ask.

Averages are worthless. Customers don’t experience the average, they experience their experience

• Treat customers uniquely. They are all different. Get to know them.

Translation is everything. Data is only numbers until someone takes it and applies it to the real world.

“In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffer