Publications

Intelligent Enterprise Magazine, By Seth Grimes, Jul 1, 2005.

Without analytic methods, there would be no "360-degree views" of customers, partners or competitors. While decision-making is still largely based on well-established methods for exploring historical data, we're starting to hear more about successes gained with predictive analytics that turn the gaze on the future. These methods offer data classification, clustering and forecasting to help organizations apply knowledge to operational decision-making and planning. Significant barriers remain. A big problem is that the algorithms are generally abstruse, designed by and for statisticians. The results often defy lay explanation. ...

In practice, complexity and opaqueness can lead to misuse. And misuse leads to guidance that's worse than worthless if it prompts erroneous decision-making.

I polled SPSS, KXEN and SAS -- vendors that many of us look to for analytic solutions -- to get their takes on usability barriers.

Here is the rest of the story.