News and articles of note

See this selection of articles covering to most important topics in analytics at the moment.

  • 5 Do's and Don'ts of Embeddable Analytics Whether you’re producing automation software, SaaS products or cloud applications, it’s likely to assume you’re collecting a lot of data in the process.
  • Achieving better analytics: the important role of asking questions Beyond the day-to-day business as usual analytics efforts, there are new technologies and techniques (and new applications of known techniques) appearing regularly.
  • Analytics professionals celebrate ABS recognition Eighteen years after the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia (IAPA) was established, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) this week officially recognised two key analytics roles, Data Analyst and Data Scientist, in the latest update to the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO).
  • Effective machine learning starts with considered human thinking Innovation makes a regular habit of outpacing those responsible for regulating its usage.
  • If a business is not data driven, it will not exist within five years: IAPA MD If your business is not data driven within five years you will not have a business, according to Annette Slunjski, Managing Director of the Institute of Analytics Professionals of Australia.
  • Learning how to design data to blow minds Data may be at the core of revolutionising finance, business, and digital industries, but visualising it to reveal the story behind the data is a skill that must be cultivated.
  • Ready for disruption: Data monetisation Big data about companies and their customers is everywhere, and it’s getting bigger. Reports suggest that the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes (2.5 million terabytes) of data per day – and that 90 percent of the world’s data was created in the last two years alone.
  • The Data Science Moment In 2009, Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, trumpeted the future value of people with statistical skills. He said: "The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians… The ability to take data, to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualise it, to communicate it.” Seven years on, there is no denying the demand for these skills. However, there is debate over what to call the people who possess them. Are they statisticians, data analysts or scientists?
  • The ethical data scientist With today's application of data science for commercial gain, what ethical standards are data scientists within all kinds of companies expected to adhere to and what are the tenets of ethics that should be applied?
  • The strategic secret weapon for business When the world, driven by data, moves so fast and forces are so disruptive, business needs data-driven insight and guidance – and many are finding their strategic secret weapon to be their analytics teams.
  • The technological future of marketing and analytics Today’s marketing and analytics professionals find themselves at the centre of a technological revolution. With the continued rise of marketing technology, programmatic advertising, social media, e-commerce, virtual reality and artificial intelligence, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an entirely different profession to the one you once worked in. With all of these options, the question of being a generalist or a specialist seems obsolete. You can’t work in the industry today without knowing something about tech, but how much do you really need to know?
  • Toward better business: the secret world of analytics Is analytics really a secret weapon for business? Well, yes and no.