Research in universities often benefits from the structured environment of academia. Unlike in small business or industry settings, intra-mural (within university) collaborations allow various experts to contribute to the research. Generally, academia does not suffer from a shortage of expertise due to collaborative efforts.

However, not all collaborations succeed and mistakes happen. David Broockmann, a political science expert who was back then a graduate student of UC Berkeley,…

An Economic Perspective on Fraud Analytics: Calculating ROI of Fraud Detection Systems

Guest blog by: Bart Baesens, Véronique Van Vlasselaer and Wouter Verbeke

The importance and need for effective fraud detection and prevention systems is highlighted by some…

Contributed by Joe Eckert. John took NYC Data Science Academy 12 week full time Data Science Bootcamp program between Sept 23 to Dec 18, 2015. The post was based on his second class project(due at 4th week of the program).

Introduction:

The goal of…

If you’re looking for a job in the big data world, chances are you may be overwhelmed. The fact is that there are more jobs out there than there are applicants.  A good problem to have, to be sure, but how do you decide which jobs to go after in such a wide playing field?

Having too many choices…

I was trying to find some good domain name for our upcoming business science website, when something suddenly became clear to me. Many of us have been confused for a long time about what data science means, how it is different from statistics, machine learning, data mining, or operations research, and the rise of the data scientist light - a new species of coders who call themselves data scientist after a few hours of Python/R…

Businesses these days rely heavily on data to make important decisions on a day-to-day basis. The flow of correct and consistent data is of great importance for business users to make quick and well informed decisions. The flow and relationships of data need to be defined and structured to ensure best results. This process is called Data Modelling. To avoid human error and speed up the process specialised software is used to help with building a logical data model, a physical data…

Starred articles are new additions or updated content, posted between Thursday and Sunday. The weekly digest has 6 sections: (1) Featured Articles and Case Studies, (2) Featured Resources and Technical Contributions, (3) From our Sponsors, (4) News, Events, Books, Training, Forum Questions, (5) Picture of the Week, and (6) Syndicated Content.

The full version is always published Monday.…

Hadoop is the leading open-source software framework developed for scalable, reliable and distributed computing. With the world producing data in the zettabyte range there is a growing need for cheap, scalable, reliable and fast computing to process and make sense of all of this data. The underlying…

This week we explore two different themes related to data. The first is how to value big data. The second looks at approaches for quantifying individual experience within the context of gender discrimination.

Treating Big Data as an Asset

It's generally taken for granted that data is a strategic asset. Every salesperson knows this, which is why they covet their Rolodex. It's one thing to know that data is valuable, and it's another to quantify that…

So let's say you have a business that has quite some people constantly accessing the company's data. Furthermore, your company has multiple locations; perhaps branch or satellite offices and the people at those remote locations also need that data. That's a lot of fingers in the data pie, and that means you need to come up with a way of dealing with the demand on one hand while maintaining data integrity on the other.

This looks like a job for data centralization. Centralization can…

Research studies show that employees perceive diversity and inclusion (D&I) as two conceptually distinct organizational practices. Whereas diversity focuses on organizational demographic blend, inclusion removes obstacles so that members from different groups work in harmony and achieve desirable business outcomes.

It is well recognized that diverse and inclusive organizational culture promotes creativity and innovation. The positive effects of diversity led to a growth of…

Change is inevitable and so are failures

The changes in technology are happening at an incredible pace. Every day there are new software languages, system processes, cloud platforms, software capabilities, etc. introduced to the digital world in some way. This new technology is being seamlessly integrated with technology built yesterday. 

It is impressive and somewhat breathtaking when these various systems work together in harmony however they will fail sooner or…

Big data analytics finds immense application across the entire business. One area which can have direct, measurable and visible impact is the area of customer service. Data has been used since time immemorial to improve customer service, but it is only recently that the full power of predictive analytics is being applied in this function. Organizations, both large and small, are using big data…

Have you ever tried a website’s keyword search and been unsatisfied with the accuracy of the results? Do you find yourself feeling frustrated and leaving when the search doesn’t return what you’re looking for or giving results but not in the order resulting in customer not able to find out? Even worse – do you find yourself just assuming what you’re looking for must not exist on that site – only to find the item on that exact same site through other channels like google search or…

We spend so much time thinking about consumers that’s it’s refreshing to find applications of Big Data and advanced analytics that are not linked to selling something.  Last week I wrote about …

Data visualisation is the process of displaying data in visual formats such as charts, graphs or maps. This method is commonly used to grasp more meaning out of a snapshot of data which in other approaches might require sorting through piles of spreadsheets and great quantity of reports. With the amount of data growing rapidly it is more important than ever to interpret all of this information correctly and quickly to make well-informed business decisions.

Graph visualisation has a…

Having got your attention I would like to introduce you to a pragmatic, real-world and business centric approach to Big Data and Big Data Analytics. When I say that this is the best approach to Big Data you are ever likely to find in the whole universe and in your entire life, I am still significantly…

Who here remembers taking computer programming in school? Whether you learned programming by punching holes in a never ending series of cards, or by writing simple DOS or other computer language commands, the fact remained that computers needed an incredibly precise set of instructions to accomplish a task.…