Predictive analytics

If you think web analytics is interesting, you should also look at "predictive analytics". I'm not talking about fellow bloggers who did predictions for the web analytics industry in 2009! Those are amusing at best and most of the time they sound like crystal ball gazing.

What is predictive analytics anyway?

I'm talking about the science of predictive analytics, what Wikipedia defines in this way:

Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from statistics and data mining that analyze current and historical data to make predictions about future events.

Eric Siegel, Ph.D. in data mining, text mining and predictive analytics defines predictive analytics in his own terms:

Predictive analytics is business intelligence technology that produces a predictive score for each customer or prospect. Assigning these predictive scores is the job of a predictive model which has, in turn, been trained over your data, learning from the experience of your organization.

Predictive analytics optimizes marketing campaigns and website behavior to increase customer responses, conversions and clicks, and to decrease churn. Each customer’s predictive score informs actions to be taken with that customer - business intelligence just doesn’t get more actionable than that.

Additional info on predictive analytics

Predictive analytics training

At one of the previous eMetrics conference I had the chance to attend Eric Siegel predictive analytics class. Great guy, I don't know if he is still doing is "analytics rap" song, but that was hilarious! But aside from being fun, the class was really enlightening with a good balance of concepts and real world examples and exercices. There will be a two day training session alongside eMetrics Toronto on april 2nd and 3rd and usually and probably another one at eMetrics in San Jose.

Predictive analytics conference

If a two day training isn't enough, you should attend the first ever Predictive Analytics World conference, going on in San Francisco, February 18-19. With speakers from Wells Fargo, the San Diego Super Computer Center, Google, Yahoo!, 3M and a slew of others, the conference will be organized in two tracks and offer two workshops: modeling and decision. If my predictions are right, this is going to be a hell of a conference! :)

Get 15% discount! Enter code immeriapaw09 when registering.

Take the Predictive Analytics World Survey

As predictive analytics quickly expands across verticals and applications, Eric and his team need your help to understand what the evolving landscape looks like. He kindly asked me to relay the information and take a few minutes, answer a handful of questions, and help him and everyone of us!

Survey result will be made available before Predictive Analytics World.

The PAW survey focuses on business applications of predictive analytics, complementing the Rexer Analytics 2008 Data Miner Survey, which covers the most popular software tools, which verticals have embraced modeling and more.

Take the survey now!