Sep/Oct 2016

It’s long been popular to talk about customer interaction data such as clickstream, social activity, inbound email and call center verbatims as “unstructured data.” Wikipedia says of the term that it “…refers to information that either does not have a pre-defined data model or is not organized in a pre-defined manner” [1]. Thus, unstructured data is a term used to describe data that does not conform to a typical relational database structure.

• Chuck Densinger
• Mark Gonzales

Decision-making based on data has historically been slow and cumbersome due to the time and effort required to store and prepare it prior to personnel analyzing it. It is no longer viable for people to analyze data themselves due to the volume, velocity and variety of data from business systems and from operational systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) that stream data in real time. In addition, to fully leverage the value in data, organizations can no longer afford to wait hours, let alone days or weeks, for details and/or requisite information that supports decisions.

• Ron Stein

Hillary Clinton’s emails, Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, among others, have directed much attention to cybersecurity. New work indicates that the most serious component of cybersecurity risk is probably the use of inferior methods to assess that risk.

• Doug Samuelson

With its museums dedicated to master painters, canals that exude old-world charm and core city streets that date back to the 17th century, Amsterdam is a place very much in touch with its past. But the city, known for being progressive and open to new ideas, has also become a pioneer for what’s possible in our data-driven future to improve citizens’ quality of life, drive new efficiencies and increase sustainability.

• Frank Harmsen

As healthcare organizations transition to value-based care, there is an increasing need for actionable information. Many organizations do not know where to start in building an information framework that assists with decision-making and drives actions.

• Shaillee Chopra
• Daniel J. Marino

Monte Carlo simulation has been used to model uncertainties since the Manhattan atomic bomb project by blasting randomly generated inputs through mathematical models. Monte Carlo spreadsheet add-ins for personal computers have been available since the mid-1980s, however, it has not been a killer app because it takes specialized training to generate the required random inputs. Actually, a great invention of the 19th century, the light bulb, was never widely adopted because it took specialized training to generate the required electricity (just kidding). Thomas Edison subsequently proposed that experts with generators provide electricity for non-experts with light bulbs, and the result was the power-distribution network.

• Sam Savage