Thursday, February 13, 2014

Small is beautiful too!



McKinsey reports that while one is getting attuned to keeping track of the conversations happening in social media using often-used keywords and sentiment analysis, there is a possibility that one could miss out on the quiet whispers. These are the not-so-strong signals that could potentially provide us with additional clues.

So here’s the parody: its just not BIG data that is important … snippets of SMALL data could be meaningful too.

So ... off we go into the realm of acoustics … listening to the faintly audible lower decibels … not just listening to tweets!

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Big Data & Artful Intelligence


Catch me if you can …
Yes, do cast a wide net. 
Data is everywhere ... all around you - can you catch 'em - but do focus on quality rather than quantity. 
You have heard this before: We begin with the three V’s: Volume, Velocity & Variety 
(that's the do-re-mi of Big Data)

Large Volumes of Structured data …
It’s the usual & the-not-very-exciting-stuff that lives in your internal databases; also in the public clouds. Always useful to have some outside data; gives you the ability to see how you compare with the outside trends.

To this we added the vast Variety of exciting Un-structured data. 
       Go ahead and happily include social perceptions. 
       Again it is critical to identify the ones that really matter to your business.        
      I can almost imagine some interesting ones. 

             Seriously, was this tweeted?
 Really, what was posted regarding this?
 How does Gen Y perceive this?
That status is so not cool!
What was pinned?
Yes, that too – the video that went viral?

Of course, with a high Velocity, you are almost capturing real-time data as well.
The in-memory columnar format – even better! Who wants a data-warehouse when you can have it alongside your transaction data.

Part or Whole …
Do you want to start with a Holistic set of data to get the big picture for your business?
Or
Do you want to start with a small set of Deeper, Segmented  data (think: specialized industries here)?

Analyze this …
What story does this data tell you?
Connect the dots and analyze from the business perspective.
Apply algorithms to derive intelligence and insights.

Missing Pieces …
Remember though to have a good data representation. Could there be any missing data that will affect the inference? What about the boundaries? Can't provide a skewed perspective, now can we?


Lay it out …
Time to provide some visually compelling and easy to understand insights for decision making.

Fast and Furious …
To this ever-changing data apply an evolving logic - logic that progressively learns from its experiences and fine-tunes in an ongoing manner.
You got it ... the logic applied should simply not be hard-coded ... it's smart enough to learn from itself... and does not require any manual logic upgrades. How do we manage that? Bingo!
Usher in - Innovative Cognitive Computing!
(… so la ti do …)

Monday, December 23, 2013

Of Groups & Sorts

Amazon .. Google .. Yahoo ... are you listening?

All these years, I resisted what I called was the trap of “online shopping”.
But 2013 saw me progressively become an online shopper.



The first time it was out of necessity - or so I thought.
I wear wide width shoes. These aren’t as readily available in stores. In the past, only Nordstrom could come to my rescue.

Next time round, it was because of the t-shirt style that I prefer. I like scoop necks; alas, stores tend to carry more of round necks and v-necks.

The other day, I went online shopping because I like pure cotton pants; & of course I don’t like it mixed with lycra!

My online shopping sprees increased; so did the rigidity of my choices.
I had reasons to not adapt; I had discovered a way out.

With time, my search prowess increased. I happily went pounding the searches on my keyboard:

Women t-shirt cotton black …
Women t-shirt cotton black scoop neck …

Heck, men don’t wear scoop necks & I certainly don’t like redundancies.
I am willing to sacrifice performance over elegance. So I drop “Women” from the search string

Black cotton scoop neck t-shirt …

If only I could sort the result by fitting style; wouldn’t I love to first see slim fits followed by relaxed fit.
Can't believe it; they have not given me a mechanism to optimize my query. How limiting!

It dawns on me – I am almost playing mind games; and having too much fun at that.
Wonder what would happen when keyword searches are widely replaced with natural language searches?

Black scoop neck t-shirts… exclude … include … 
rule based ... not cost based please!
Evidently, I love elegance in my attire & in my queries – no semantics here.

Amazon..Google ... Yahoo .. are you up for it?





Sunday, December 8, 2013

More on DeZaView



DeZaView

One in five students in the US are enrolled in an online course. We are seeing an explosive growth in online courses and, expansion of a bewildering array of online learning material. This is raising a question about what exactly the students, teacher and parents expect from courses delivered over internet- whether purely online, blended or flipped.

Should K-12 students use Wikipedia as a major source, while researching for their assignment or, supplementing their learning?   This debate has been raging on for some time in the teachers and educators community.

More on Class Junky



Finding quality leisure activities, adult courses, and after school programs can be a frustrating experience, especially for those new to an area. Class Junky makes it easy! Here you will find an amazing array of leisure courses and classes that are an excellent way of learning new crafts or skills in a fun, relaxed atmosphere while meeting new friends who share your interests.
For the classes in which you can register online, we offer a secure payment system for your protection.



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