Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

Appendix C

Prediction People—Cast of “Characters”

Eric Siegel, PhD—this book’s author

• President of Prediction Impact, Inc. (business-speak for an independent consultant).
• Founder, Predictive Analytics World.
• Executive Editor of the Predictive Analytics Times.
• Former computer science professor at Columbia University.

John Elder, PhD

Invested his entire life savings into his own predictive stock market trading system (see Chapter 1).

• CEO and Founder, Elder Research, Inc.
• Founding Chair, Predictive Analytics World for Government.
• Coauthor, Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications.
• Adjunct professor at the University of Virginia.

Gitali Halder and Anindya Dey

Led a staff retention project that earmarks each of Hewlett-Packard’s almost 350,000 worldwide employees according to “Flight Risk,” the expected chance they will quit their jobs (see Chapter 2).

• Analytics practitioners at Hewlett-Packard.
• Backgrounds in statistics and economics.

Andrew Pole

Led a marketing project at Target that predicts customer pregnancy (see Chapter 2).

• Analytics Manager at Target.
• Previously a lead consumer analyst at Hallmark Cards.
• Master’s degrees in statistics and economics.
• View his original newsbreaking presentation on pregnancy prediction: www.pawcon.com/Target.

Eric Gilbert, PhD, and Karrie Karahalios, PhD

Measured the mass emotions of the public and related them to economic movements (see Chapter 3).

• Scientists at the University of Illinois (Gilbert is now at Georgia ...