Episode 02: Optimized Decision Making with Analytics
I recently sat down with Prof. Dr. Marco Lübbecke, currently a professor and the chair for the Operations Research department at the RWTH Aachen (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen) – the largest technical university in Germany.
I invited Marco on the show to talk about the enormous buzzword “analytics” – or “big data analytics” – These words are being thrown around in news stories and corporate updates around the globe: descriptive analytics, diagnostic analytics, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics.
In this episode, Marco provides some helpful definitions and practical examples for each type of analytics and notes where companies can benefit most from the data they are collecting.
In the previous episode, we heard from Dr. Fraud, who mentioned some recent research revealing that in the next six months there is going to be more data available than in all of human history. The big question is what are companies doing with all of this data – Or what can companies do with all of this data? That is where these analytics buzzwords are coming into play, and we address these questions in episode 2 of buzzITtalk:
Show Notes
Marco Lübbecke introduces himself and focus of research (2:21)
Why studying mathematics is a great idea (4:17)
Different Types of analytics (8:00)
Descriptive analytics defined (10:33)
Diagnostic analytics defined (12:04)
Predictive analytics defined (13:20)
Prescriptive analytics defined (15:47)
Brief talk about cognitive analytics (20:55)
Does prescriptive analytics make better decisions than humans? (22:00)
Which type of analytics is receiving the most attention – where should companies be focusing their attention? (24:55)
What are some areas where prescriptive analytics has been proven most successful and where can it not be applied at all? (28:29)
What applications will we see in the future based on prescriptive analytics? (31:50)
Connect with Marco Lübbecke on Twitter to continue the discussion on analytics, or leave a comment below!
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