I recently completed a full iron-distance triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) after 9 months of training.  There are similarities between my experience as a triathlete and as a Big Data Analytics team member at SAP.  Elements of success are the same in both venues.

(1)    The first similarity is acquisition of multiple skill sets. While triathlons involve swimming, biking and running, the Big Data Analytics team must have skills in machine…

Most data scientists and statisticians agree that predictive modeling is both art and  science yet, relatively little to no  air time is given to describing the art. This post describes one piece of the art of modeling called feature engineering which expands the number of variables you have to build a model.  I offer  six ways to implement feature engineering and provide…