Malthus, Demographics, Scrooge and Rwanda
Kevin Spacey in the T.V. show Wiseguy says, "The population grows geometrically and the food supply grows arithmetically. Three things keep the balance: Famine. Disease. And war." This is an accurate...
View ArticleCapital One and Microsegmentation: “Your business magic lies in the...
Credit Cards… Late 20th CenturyThe credit card industry in the eighties was defined by uniform, non-tailored interest rates, imprecise credit risk decisions based on human intuition, little product...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Text Mining, Legal Research and Google Books
What does text have to do with quantitative methods?Text mining is the use of computers and algorithms to classify, associate, or search large amounts of unstructured text data. This is a quantitative...
View ArticleForce Multipliers, Ballistics Software and the Tank Battle of 73 Easting
I heard stories for years about a near mythical Desert Storm tank battle, where every Iraqi tank was destroyed while all of the vastly outnumbered American tanks survived. A long search revealed this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The $1,000,000 Netflix Challenge
Netflix " has more than 7 million subscribers, who have the option to rate movies on a scale of 1 to 5. To encourage users to keep their subscriptions active, Netflix rolled out Cinematch, which used...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Evolutionary Police Sketch Software and Genetic Algorithms
The FBI prefers artists for sketching suspects, but software is rapidly making inroads. Demand for a software solution was created by the many police departments that couldn't afford such an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reverse Engineering The IRS DIF-Score
What would you do if you were a statistician audited by the IRS? Dr. Amir Aczel, Professor of Statistics at Bentley college and author of the 1995 book How To Beat The IRS At Its Own Game chose to...
View ArticlePredicting Pitcher Injuries with Neural Networks
My first blog entry documented the Oakland A’s quantitative strategy as described in the book Moneyball. Although seeking more novel applications of QM, I recently stumbled on The Extra 2%: How Wall...
View ArticleClik here to view.
McKinsey Consulting: “Big Data Is The Next Frontier”
What Is Big Data?BigData in its literal sense, refers to data whose scale requires radically new tools, storage, software, and approaches to use it fully. (1) Big Data now refers to the underlying data...
View ArticleA/B Testing and Experimentation as a Competitive Advantage
I've touched on the idea of experimentation as a competitive advantage in my Harrah's, CapOne, and Taylorismblogs, although I've avoided this topic so far because it is overwhelming. Experimentation is...
View ArticleMicrosoft ExP and Experimentation ROI
Why do you need experimentation? Can’t we just rely on our best judgment?Just in case my prior blog didn't convince you, the answer is no, you can’t rely on your best judgment because our intuition is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Dowding System and Information Strategy in the Battle of Britain
Sir Hugh Dowding, the Chief of RAF Fighter Command during the 1940 Battle of Britain faced a critical question, "How to best use the 1,000 fighter aircraft under his command against the much larger...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Moore's Law and Computer Simulation in Microchip Design
Many people have heard of Moore's Law, that "the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on a microchip will double every two years" and assumed that it drove the performance...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Normality Assumptions and Power Law Distributions
I was reading through What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell, and came across the following story, originally published by the New Yorker in 2006. The story offers three powerful examples demonstrating a...
View ArticleDo Successful Analytics Companies Require Quant CEOs?
Do Successful Analytics Companies Require Quant CEOs?I should have read it long ago, but I finally sank my teeth into Competing On Analytics over the holidays. I'm just as enamored with the subject...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The GoldCorp Challenge and the Beginning of Crowdsourced Analytics
The Beginning of Crowdsourced AnalyticsDespite all of the press it got, the Netflix Challenge wasn’t the first crowdsourced analytics problem. That distinction goes to the GoldCorp Challenge, which...
View ArticleCrowdsourcing Analytics: Restraints On Growth
Is Crowdsourced Analytics Effective?I came across an interesting question on Quora the other day about the relative lack of growth in crowdsourced analytics over the past decade. The successes of the...
View ArticleGoogle's Mythical Merger Success Rate
Google Claims A 70% Acquisition Success Rate?A recent Xconomy article about Google’s acquisition strategy grabbed my attention, because in it Google claimed a whopping “70% success rate.” According to...
View ArticleData-Driven Decision Making (DDDM) as an Intangible Asset
A fascinating New York Times article on Data-Driven Decision Making (DDDM) got my attention recently. Professors at MIT and Wharton concluded that companies using DDDM “achieved productivity that was 5...
View ArticleA Data Driven Strategy for Online Dating Sites
Given the popularity of my prior blog on eHarmony strategic advantage, I thought I'd delve back into the mining of dating site information. While this topic continues to appear in behavioral economics...
View ArticleAmerican Airlines' and Delta’s Revenue Management Systems
BackgroundAlthough I’ve referenced Harrah’s yield management system in a prior blog, the first yield management system was developed by American Airlines in the 1980’s with the support of the CEO...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Australian Olympic Success: Winning with Quants not Jocks
The July issue of Wired magazine gave a powerful example of Competitive Advantage via Quantitative Methods in the Olympics. It pointed out that Australia generates 6 times the medals per capita as the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Narwhal, Dreamcatcher, Houdini, Optimizer, Call Tool and Blaster - The...
The 2012 Presidential election has been labeled the ‘Moneyball Election’for the transformative role that big data and analytics played in the Obama campaign’s victory. On the other hand though, Nate...
View ArticlePorsche Lean Manufacturing and Statistical Process Control
BackgroundPorsche in the 1990’s “was fighting for its own survival.” (Plumer) After orders decreased 70% from 1986 to 1993 “the company was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, and there were whispers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Zara, Fast-fashion, Optimization and the OM Triangle
Zara is the dominant brand in the Inditex apparel portfolio, which Inditex has operated in ‘fast-fashion’ style for a few decades. Although other fast-fashion retailers such as H&M and Benetton...
View Article
