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

The leading free, open-source software tool for PA, called R (a one-letter, geeky name), has a rapidly expanding base of users as well as enthusiastic volunteer developers who add to and support its functionalities.

In fact, an organization that doesn’t leverage its data in this way is like a person with a photographic memory who never bothers to think.

PA is the process by which an organization learns from the experience it has collectively gained across its team members and computer systems.

Whereas forecasting estimates the total number of ice cream cones to be purchased next month in Nebraska, predictive technology tells you which individual Nebraskans are most likely to be seen with cone in hand

PA is the means to drive per-person decisions empirically, as guided by data

Predictive analytics (PA)—Technology that learns from experience (data) to predict the future behavior of individuals in order to drive better decisions

the value is derived from identifying a group of people who—in aggregate—will tend to behave in a certain way.

But data isn’t the gold. I repeat, data in its raw form is boring crud. The gold is what’s discovered therein