We're having work done on our house at the moment. It's an older place that hasn't had as much maintenance as it should and so while it's not a full rebuild, it's still enough that there's a regular procession of tradespeople ("tradies", to most Australians) around the place. And, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that everyone does a bad job.
Don't get me wrong - most of the time, I can't even see anything out of place! Apart, that is, from our crooked steps that have been rebuilt three times now, but let's not go there ...
Every time anyone looks at work someone else did, we've inevitably heard about how badly it's been done, how they would have done it differently, and how they'd sack their labourers if they did such a dodgy job. At some stage you just have to laugh.
Analytics is the same, even if it seems unrelated. Everyone has a different definition of what "analytics" really means. To some, it's optimising SQL. To others, it's playing with data in Excel. Artificial intelligence, rules engines, statistical analysis, time series analysis, operations research ... if you get ten people in a room, you'll almost inevitably get ten different answers. It's no wonder that people get confused!
Cutting through this Gordian knot is simple - to me, they're all "analytics". Analytics is fundamentally about extracting insight from data, regardless of how that happens. It may be as simple as joining a series of tables to create a single view of customer or it may be as complex as doing integer-based non-linear optimisation to work out optimal shipping paths. Regardless of how sophisticated the analysis may be, they're all about transforming data into information.
The mind-blowing thing is that when you look at it like that, analytics is probably one of the largest technical domains in the world. We're all analysts in some way - the only thing that varies is the level of sophistication that we use. Much like my tiles, actually - I'm sophisticated enough to know a good outcome when I see it, even if I need someone's help to get there in the first place.
For a somewhat distracting (and hopefully entertaining) Friday activity, have a look around your life and count the number of applications of analytics you can find. Trying to optimise your path through the supermarket for Friday night's dinner? Analytics. Counting up Q4 sales and measuring against target? Analytics. Setting up an office pool and making sure everyone has an equal chance to win? Analytics.
It's pervasive. And, that's a good thing - analytics helps us make better decisions. It doesn't replace intuition, but it helps us understand what we do and don't know. It helps us discover those impossible situations that our data suggests exist but, on analysis, quite simply can't. It makes our lives less unsure, every day of the week.
We're all analysts now, even if we didn't realise it.
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