Understanding the Predictive Analytics Lifecycle

Foreword

With this book, Al has made an astonishing contribution to the growing body of knowledge about business analytics. The book offers an unprecedented look into the gory details of life as a programmer/analyst, BI specialist, researcher, project manager, data scientist, and consultant. It offers examples of problem solving that could only have been applied by using the progressive power of information technologies that was mastered in the 1990s and 2000s. Have there been other books about this topic? Of course, but none has portrayed the human side of this global endeavor with so much enthusiasm and humor before. For the first time, Al personifies the characters that play important roles in the lifecycle of the generation and use of predictive analytics, showing their creative abilities in industries such as banking, megaresorts, mobile operators, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. These personifications helps us all better understand and manage this big and complex process of deriving information from data in today’s increasingly sophisticated race to drive productivity and innovation. This understanding is essential to excel at providing an outstanding customer experience, manage customer churn, and perform data-intensive marketing campaigns.

This book has many “novelistic” aspects and is very conversational. This way the stories do make each section more personal and relatable.

The “Note Files” in particular will be quite helpful for readers as they present examples ...