The Business Analytics (BA) Revolution

• Activity Number: 52
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 3, 2014 : 4:00 PM to 5:50 PM
• Sponsor: Business and Economic Statistics Section
• Author(s): Randy Bartlett*+
• Companies: Blue Sigma Analytics
• Keywords: business analytics ; data science ; Big Data ; business analytics revolution ; data mining ; machine language

Abstract

Welcome to the Business Analytics (BA) Revolution. We live in an age of fast-paced decision-making, assorted market disruptions and information and misinformation overload. Torrents of data relentlessly rush in, generated by a digital revolution, which is characterized by hyper-connectivity and real-time decision-making. This is the golden age of two value propositions: data management and data analysis.

Data science and Big Data are inevitable rebrandings of these IT and statistics/quant value propositions to attract new consumers. Unfortunately, this rebranding facilitates new myths and exacerbates the old misconceptions. For data analysis, there is no paradigm shift and no new alternatives to statistics.

We will discuss how we, as applied statisticians/quants, should communicate our value proposition. We will validate that, while the veneer has changed, the content remains the same--statistics is still center stage in the realm of data analysis. Finally, we will put data science in perspective and validate that analyzing Big Data means more statistics, not less.