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

Introduction

The Prediction Effect

I’m just like you. I succeed at times, and at others I fail. Some days good things happen to me, some days bad. We always wonder how things could have gone differently. I begin with six brief tales of woe:

1. In 2009 I just about destroyed my right knee downhill skiing in Utah. The jump was no problem; it was landing that presented an issue. For knee surgery, I had to pick a graft source from which to reconstruct my busted ACL (the knee’s central ligament). The choice is a tough one and can make the difference between living with a good knee or a bad knee. I went with my hamstring. Could the hospital have selected a medically better option for my case?

2. Despite all my suffering, it was really my health insurance company that paid dearly—knee surgery is expensive. Could the company have better anticipated the risk of accepting a ski jumping fool as a customer and priced my insurance premium accordingly?

3. Back in 1995 another incident caused me suffering, although it hurt less. I fell victim to identity theft, costing me dozens of hours of bureaucratic baloney and tedious paperwork to clear up my damaged credit rating. Could the creditors have prevented the fiasco by detecting that the accounts were bogus when they were filed under my name in the first place?

4. With my name cleared, I recently took out a mortgage to buy an apartment. Was it a good move, or should my financial adviser have warned me the property could soon be outvalued by my ...