From
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00000871—-000-.html
§ 871. Threats against President and successors to the Presidency
From
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/718/usc_sec_18_00000871—-000-.html
If you are a marketing , analyst relationship, public relationship or a product manager who uses or abuses social media, you sometimes need to track what influencers and analysts are saying. A tool called Bettween allows you to capture public conversations between two influential (or interesting) tweeps.
See conversations between Neil Raden http://www.beyeblogs.com/raden/ and Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/ two noted BI gurus
http://bettween.com/neilraden/curtmonash
http://bettween.com/neilraden/curtmonash#statistics
tools to analyze Twitter conversations in SAS
Just updated Decisionstats.com
Note the new D logo on top of web page.
Also redesigned the following pages-
Here is an interview with David Katz ,founder of David Katz Consulting (http://www.davidkatzconsulting.com/) and an analyst at the noted firm http://dataspora.com/. He is a featured speaker at Predictive Analytics World http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2011/speakers.php#katz)
Ajay- Describe your background working with analytics . How can we make analytics and science more attractive career options for young students
David- I had an interest in math from an early age, spurred by reading lots of science fiction with mathematicians and scientists in leading roles. I was fortunate to be at Harry and David (Fruit of the Month Club) when they were in the forefront of applying multivariate statistics to the challenge of targeting catalogs and other snail-mail offerings. Later I had the opportunity to expand these techniques to the retail sphere with Williams-Sonoma, who grew their retail business with the support of their catalog mailings. Since they had several catalog titles and product lines, cross-selling presented additional analytic challenges, and with the growth of the internet there was still another channel to consider, with its own dynamics.
After helping to found Abacus Direct Marketing, I became an independent consultant, which provided a lot of variety in applying statistics and data mining in a variety of settings from health care to telecom to credit marketing and education.
Students should be exposed to the many roles that analytics plays in modern life, and to the excitement of finding meaningful and useful patterns in the vast profusion of data that is now available.
Ajay- Describe your most challenging project in 3 decades of experience in this field.
David- Hard to choose just one, but the educational field has been particularly interesting. Partnering with Olympic Behavior Labs, we’ve developed systems to help identify students who are most at-risk for dropping out of school to help target interventions that could prevent dropout and promote success.
Ajay- What do you think are the top 5 trends in analytics for 2011.
David- Big Data, Privacy concerns, quick response to consumer needs, integration of testing and analysis into business processes, social networking data.
Ajay- Do you think techniques like RFM and LTV are adequately utilized by organization. How can they be propagated further.
David- Organizations vary amazingly in how sophisticated or unsophisticated the are in analytics. A key factor in success as a consultant is to understand where each client is on this continuum and how well that serves their needs.
Ajay- What are the various software you have worked for in this field- and name your favorite per category.
David- I started out using COBOL (that dates me!) then concentrated on SAS for many years. More recently R is my favorite because of its coverage, currency and programming model, and it’s debugging capabilities.
Ajay- Independent consulting can be a strenuous job. What do you do to unwind?
David- Cycling, yoga, meditation, hiking and guitar.
Biography-
He is the founder and President of David Katz Consulting, specializing in sophisticated statistical services for a variety of applications, with a special focus on the Direct Marketing Industry. David Katz has an extensive background that includes experience in all aspects of direct marketing from data mining, to strategy, to test design and implementation. In addition, he consults on a variety of data mining and statistical applications from public health to collections analysis. He has partnered with consulting firms such as Ernst and Young, Prediction Impact, and most recently on this project with Dataspora.
For more on David’s Session in Predictive Analytics World, San Fransisco on (http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/sanfrancisco/2011/agenda.php#day2-16a)
Room: Salon 5 & 6
4:45pm – 5:05pm
Track 2: Social Data and Telecom 
Case Study: Major North American Telecom
Social Networking Data for Churn Analysis
A North American Telecom found that it had a window into social contacts – who has been calling whom on its network. This data proved to be predictive of churn. Using SQL, and GAM in R, we explored how to use this data to improve the identification of likely churners. We will present many dimensions of the lessons learned on this engagement.
Speaker: David Katz, Senior Analyst, Dataspora, and President, David Katz Consulting
Exhibit Hours
Monday, March 14th:10:00am to 7:30pm
Tuesday, March 15th:9:45am to 4:30pm
Using two Chrome Extensions, Disconnect and AdBlock you can be sure of having a vary very clean browsing experience-it is recommended especially if you dont like the auto sharing of your personal preferences and cannot be bothered by the Byzantine maze of social media privacy fineprint.
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/jeoacafpbcihiomhlakheieifhpjdfeo




(184) – 44,284 users – Weekly installs: 24,086Stop major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do.
* Search depersonalization is now optional and off by default. Click the “d” button then the “Depersonalize searches” checkbox to turn this feature on (or back off in case you have trouble getting to Google or Yahoo services). For help with anything else, see the known issues below and ask questions at http://j.mp/dnewgroup. § If you’re a typical web user, you’re unintentionally sending your browsing and search history with your name and other personal information to third parties and search engines whenever you’re online. Take control of the data you share with Disconnect! From the developer of the top-10-rated Facebook Disconnect extension, Disconnect lets you: • Disable tracking by third parties like Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Yahoo, without requiring any setup or significantly degrading the usability of the web. • Truly depersonalize searches on search engines like Google and Yahoo (by blocking identifying cookies not just changing the appearance of results pages), while staying logged into other services — e.g., so you can search anonymously on Google and access iGoogle at once. • See how many resource and cookie requests are blocked, in real time
and
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom
Extensions > AdBlockAdBlock
(6937) - 1,615,373 users - Weekly installs: 153,032
The most popular Chrome extension, with over 1.5 million users! Blocks ads all over the web.Verified author: chromeadblock.com
================= New in version 2.1: Translated into dozens of languages! New in version 2.0: Ads are blocked from downloading, instead of just being removed after the fact! ======================= The official AdBlock For Chrome! Block all advertisements on all web pages. Your browser is automatically updated with additions to the filter: just click Install, then visit your favorite website and see the ads disappear! FAQs:1. This is the official AdBlock extension: the original ad blocker written from the ground up to be optimized in Chrome. There's an unrelated, older Firefox project called Adblock Plus, and they're working on making a Chrome version out of the old AdThwart codebase. At the moment AdBlock blocks some ads that AdThwart only hides, but they're working to improve it. It's available at bit.ly/id2Gqx; if you have trouble with AdBlock, they're good guys and a fine alternative!
I had recently asked some friends from my Twitter lists for their take on 2011, atleast 3 of them responded back with the answer, 1 said they were still on it, and 1 claimed a recent office event.
Anyways- I take note of the view of forecasting from
http://www.uiah.fi/projekti/metodi/190.htm
The most primitive method of forecasting is guessing. The result may be rated acceptable if the person making the guess is an expert in the matter.
Ajay- people will forecast in end 2010 and 2011. many of them will get forecasts wrong, some very wrong, but by Dec 2011 most of them would be writing forecasts on 2012. almost no one will get called on by irate users-readers- (hey you got 4 out of 7 wrong last years forecast!) just wont happen. people thrive on hope. so does marketing. in 2011- and before
and some forecasts from Tom Davenport’s The International Institute for Analytics (IIA) at
http://iianalytics.com/2010/12/2011-predictions-for-the-analytics-industry/
Regulatory and privacy constraints will continue to hamper growth of marketing analytics.
(I wonder how privacy and analytics can co exist in peace forever- one view is that model building can use anonymized data suppose your IP address was anonymized using a standard secret Coco-Cola formula- then whatever model does get built would not be of concern to you individually as your privacy is protected by the anonymization formula)
Anyway- back to the question I asked-
What are the top 5 events in your industry (events as in things that occured not conferences) and what are the top 3 trends in 2011.
I define my industry as being online technology writing- research (with a heavy skew on stat computing)
My top 5 events for 2010 were-
1) Consolidation- Big 5 software providers in BI and Analytics bought more, sued more, and consolidated more. The valuations rose. and rose. leading to even more smaller players entering. Thus consolidation proved an oxy moron as total number of influential AND disruptive players grew.
2) Cloudy Computing- Computing shifted from the desktop but to the mobile and more to the tablet than to the cloud. Ipad front end with Amazon Ec2 backend- yup it happened.
3) Open Source grew louder- yes it got more clients. and more revenue. did it get more market share. depends on if you define market share by revenues or by users.
Both Open Source and Closed Source had a good year- the pie grew faster and bigger so no one minded as long their slices grew bigger.
4) We didnt see that coming –
Technology continued to surprise with events (thats what we love! the surprises)
Revolution Analytics broke through R’s Big Data Barrier, Tableau Software created a big Buzz, Wikileaks and Chinese FireWalls gave technology an entire new dimension (though not universally popular one).
people fought wars on emails and servers and social media- unfortunately the ones fighting real wars in 2009 continued to fight them in 2010 too
5) Money-
SAP,SAS,IBM,Oracle,Google,Microsoft made more money than ever before. Only Facebook got a movie named on itself. Venture Capitalists pumped in money in promising startups- really as if in a hurry to park money before tax cuts expired in some countries.
2011 Top Three Forecasts
1) Surprises- Expect to get surprised atleast 10 % of the time in business events. As internet grows the communication cycle shortens, the hype cycle amplifies buzz-
more unstructured data is created (esp for marketing analytics) leading to enhanced volatility
2) Growth- Yes we predict technology will grow faster than the automobile industry. Game changers may happen in the form of Chrome OS- really its Linux guys-and customer adaptability to new USER INTERFACES. Design will matter much more in technology on your phone, on your desktop and on your internet. Packaging sells.
False Top Trend 3) I will write a book on business analytics in 2011. yes it is true and I am working with A publisher. No it is not really going to be a top 3 event for anyone except me,publisher and lucky guys who read it.
3) Creating technology and technically enabling creativity will converge at an accelerated rate. use of widgets, guis, snippets, ide will ensure creative left brains can code easier. and right brains can design faster and better due to a global supply chain of techie and artsy professionals.
This Thanksgiving as I prayed to God for my family– I prayed to him to give me more time with my loving family. An insight or revelation struck me-
I was spending more time with my computer than with my loved ones.
Is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn essential to living? No
I have 1700 followers on Twitter
1100 “Friends” on Facebook, and 9429 “Connections” on Linkedin
Deleting Facebook was an emotionally wrenching decision- see this screenshot- I tried to download all my account- family photos (320 mb) but connection kept breaking-
so I had just deactivate and not delete the account. You win, Zuckenberg
How to-
Right Hand Top Corner —-Account Settings- Deactivate Account
After Facebook de activates your account- it mocks you by saying this this in YELLOW “
Your Facebook account has been deactivated.
To reactivate your account, log in using your old login email and password. You will be able to use the site like you used to.
We hope you come back soon.”
I go back to Facebook to download all my family photos before final deletion (and not just de activation)- I get this message
It may take a little while for us to gather all of your photos, wall posts, messages, and other information. We will then ask you to verify your identity in order to help protect the security of your account.
Yeah Yeah Mark.
One Down Two to Go
Deleting Twitter
Twitter was disappointingly easy-
Go to http://twitter.com/settings/account
At bottom left you see Deactivate my account.
Twitter tries to scare me now-
Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider? Was it something we said? Tell us.
Account restoration is currently unavailable. Here is the message you agreed to before deactivating your account:
Your close account request must be processed by customer support for the following reason:
You will receive a confirmation email from customer support indicating that they received your request to close your account.
The account that customer support will process for closure is below:
| Member Comment: ajay ohri | 11/24/2010 23:10 |
| Member ID: 6691344 Member Name: Ajay Ohri The member has attempted to self close this account and was unable because: The member has a large network of connections to close. Please close during non peak hours. Please confirm with the member when his or her account has been successfully closed. |
|
And if you dont’ know how to find me on my blog-
Happy Thanksgiving-and kill that Turkey 🙂