While techies debate the state of the Internet of Things and its potential to transform the way we interact with almost everything, there’s little doubt that the IoT will continue to be a topic of great interest throughout the worldwide analytics community and beyond for many years to come.
Averages lie to you. One of our publishing clients looked at the average sell-through rate of its online advertising inventory and noted it was 70 percent. “We can launch a metered paywall, and as long as we do not lose more than 30 percent of our inventory, the lost advertising revenue should be minimal,” they thought.
I’ve spent the last few months working with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. HRDAG has historically focused on unstable regions around the world, scientifically examining data captured by local institutions and grassroots activists to try to discern the truth about the volume and patterns of human rights violations [1]. My work there has been focused on data from Colombia.
The 2016 election is a watershed moment for the U.S. healthcare industry. Any presidential election and change of guards come with changes in policies. It happened in 2008 when President Obama was sworn into the office. That led to the establishment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare. To bend the cost curve, which was swinging up uncontrollably, lawmakers passed a very comprehensive legislative change in U.S. healthcare that expanded insurance coverage for 20 million Americans through Medicaid expansion and the establishment of health information exchanges. When the law was passed, we saw many kinds of reactions – from cautious skepticism to digital health euphoria in the industry. Since then, slowly but surely the industry changed course toward a new model of care delivery and payment. ACA drew scathing criticism from the other side of the aisle with repeated vows to repeal. Given the election results of 2016, we anticipate a move in a different direction. The challenge is the degree of disagreement in the views among the lawmakers. A giant financial behemoth such as the healthcare industry can’t be swayed one way or the other so frequently. Much is at stake, and hence the risks are very high.
The inaugural Meeting of Analytics Program Directors (MAPD) will be held on April 1 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, the day before the start of the 2017 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research in the same locale.
Does advertising work? Few will deny that advertising plays an important role in building awareness. The idiom, “out of sight, out of mind,” speaks to the importance of being seen in order to even be thought of. Looking back over the years, however, there’s a strong case to be made that advertising as we know it has been a mixed bag financially. And while emerging forms of advertising improve our ability to target, modern channels are being questioned just as much as traditional media in terms of overall effectiveness. What appears to be certain is, as consumers have greater access to information, the link between an ad’s effectiveness and the intrinsic “compellingness” of what’s advertised is likely to increase.
The 2017 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics and Operations Research will take place in Las Vegas on April 2-4 at Caesars Palace. Caesars is one of the most prestigious casino hotels in the world, as well as one of Las Vegas’ largest and best-known landmarks.
This article is going to do two things I’ve never done before: first is to include a co-author, and second is to write about the same topic using (almost) the same data. To recap, in “The Force Awakens,” Kylo Ren fears that he will succumb to the light because he is not as dark as his hero, Darth Vader. We considered this problem in July 2016 using “Darkside Envelopment Analysis.” We repeat the data used as Table 1 (spoiler alert) slightly updated to reflect events of “Rogue One.”
A popular game in the Apple and Google app stores is a space adventure game where, among other things, you need to decide which spaceship to buy.
In the last few articles I tried to put the spotlight on new developments in healthcare around the world. As we are getting closer to the end of 2019, I am energized to see positive movements in the healthcare analytics and health information technology space continuing worldwide. Let’s look at what is happening at home first.
