Requests

I'm consulting in areas of data mining and business intelligence (e.g. dashboard building) and mostly focus on customer analytics and marketing program information.

I've often struggled with the situation of being at a party or introduced to someone and they ask "So, what do you do for a living?". If I know they know about data mining, business intelligence, etc. then I use such words. If they are in the business arena, I may say something like "Oh, i help companies utilize their data to make great decisions and drive results" which often does not come off very smooth. For the rest of the people (including friends/family), I am really stumped. A co-worker of mine defaults to "computer programmer" or "I develop reports" which seems far from accurate.

I'm interested in what you and/or your readers, answer in these situations of different kinds of people. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you - Brian

Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro:
When asked by non-technical people what do I do, I usually reply, half-jokingly,
I predict the future.

If they are interested, I can describe some exciting applications, from fraud detection to personalized (and improved) medicine.