Talking Soccer, Data and Analytics with the President!

Sunil Gulati is the current president of the United States Soccer Federation and an economics professor at Columbia University. In this video we talk about the role of analytics in soccer today and in the future.

Bringing Down the House with Jeff Ma!

Jeff won millions-and inspired the Hollywood film 21-when he masterminded a card counting scheme involving his fellow MIT classmates and took on Vegas. Ma has now parlayed his love for analytics, gambling and sports into a career as an analyst, author and speaker.  In this video we talk about what blackjack can teach us about predictive analytics and business intelligence. Can you take on the house?

Malcolm Gladwell and Analytics

Malcolm Gladwell is a legend – you’ve probably read some of his books such as “Blink”, “Tipping Point” or “Outliers”.  In this interview, we talk about the famous 10,000 hour rule and how great decisions can be made.

The Data Deluge

Kenneth Cukier, Correspondent for The Economist and Author of “The Data Deluge” is one of my heroes.  He is one of the first to write about Business Intelligence and Data into a mainstream business paper.  In this interview, we chat about the importance that analytics have and how the companies that haven’t built it as part of their culture will soon be ‘out of luck’.

Here are some great insights:

• Farecast, a part of the Microsoft® BingTM search engine, can suggest whether travelers should buy an airline ticket now or wait for the price to come down by examining 225 billion flight and price records.
• A Boeing jet generates 10 terabytes of information per engine every 30 minutes of flight, meaning a cross-country flight by a twin-engine Boeing 737 would produce 240 terabytes of data.
• At eBay, analytics is used by one-third of the 18,000-person workforce, many of whom are call-center workers who view analytics on their desktops when calls come in.

And my favorite:

• Executives should be embracing the big data opportunity now. “It’s also a mandatory requirement,” Cukier exclaims. “If you don’t do it, you’re out of luck and out of a job, because the whole basis for your company will be an analytical, statistical, data-driven model. If you don’t know this information, you won’t be valuable to your company anymore.”

For feedback on the interview or to share more of your data stories, feel free to email me directly @ bruno@brunoaziza.com or Ken @ KennethCukier@Economist.com.   Ken’s report can be found here and you can follow him on Twitter @ kncukier

Why Thinking is the Enemy of Innovation

Are you one of the critics of business analytics?  Do you disregard your scorecard?  If so, you need to watch our latest interview with management guru L. Vaughan Spencer on BizIntelligence.TV!  L. Vaughan gives us insight into the world of analytics and tells us why touching trees can often be vital in making important business decisions.  In this exclusive episode, L. Vaughan helps us take the “big picture” and make it even BIGGER!

This post was also featured on the Business Page of The Economist this morning (see below)

 

Analytics for Humans

Outstanding talk both in the depth of research and humanization of the story.  [Thanks @Loic for pointing to it]

This talks does a great job reminding us of the key opportunities we have with data and analytics.

1) Don’t be afraid to collect data (big data is here – collect before you know what you need to measure)
2) Work hard to connect and correlate (value doesn’t come from staight data but your ability to connect the dots).
3) Once causality and correlation are understood – start predicting!

Data is the new Operating System of companies and humans – this video is a proof of it!  Great job here!

Excel at 25 — What Are Your 25 Favorite Features?

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of Microsoft Office Excel.

In honor of this anniversary, Bruno Aziza brought the BITV team to the Sundance Film Festival to ask the simple question… “What are YOUR top 25 favorite features in Excel?”

Pre-April’s Fool Day Poll…

What do you do when you stuggle with numbers? Vote @ http://linkd.in/dOdMUe

For more serious content, you can always subscribe to our weekly BI TV show @ www.bizintelligence.tv

Can your Data Set change your Mind Set? The answer from Guy Kawasaki…

I sat down with legendary thought leader Guy Kawasaki.  We talk about how you can connect with and inspire employees, when forgiveness might be easier than permission and why companies should do away with the post-mortem.

Finding Love & Losing Weight….with Analytics!

How could you predict the taste of a bottle of wine that’s never been opened? Or know how much money a Hollywood film will make before it’s even been shot? Or choose a perfect stranger to be your soulmate?

In this 3 part-series, Dr. Ian Ayres, author of Supercrunchers, shares amazing examples of predictive analytics being implemented in a wide variety of industries, as well as who is embracing these probabilities and who is resisting them.

Wine, Movies and Love:  Data Can Predict Winners

Using Incentives to Achieve Goals

Goals And Contracts:  Best Practices for Weight Loss

This series was also featured on the Freakonomics blog