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Author Archives: Gary Thompson
Do we have Big Data backwards?
A client recently shared an article from Supply Chain Management outlining five leading Supply Chain trends. The fifth trend was the increasing importance of “Big Data.” And while not spelled out specifically by the author, the first four trends are … Continue reading
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Intuition vs. Objectivity? And the winner is…
Two weeks ago I wrote about an interesting experiment in the Wall Street Journal to compare intuition versus objectivity in picking winners in this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament. The intuitive method was straightforward – pick the winner of each … Continue reading
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The NCAA tournament: Intuition vs. Objectivity
It’s mid-March, which of course means the NCAA Basketball tournament and the detailed analysis that drives our bracket predictions. Uh, wait….detailed analysis? Do we really analyze the teams and matchups in forecasting the outcome of the tournament? Or do we … Continue reading
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The best thing that can ever happen to a Presentation
I spent a little time this evening catching up on the Sunday morning talk shows (via DVR, of course). I watched the various pundits debate the pickle the Republicans now find themselves in due to tropical storm Isaac deciding to … Continue reading
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Keeping momentum
It’s been an embarrassingly long time since I last posted. For me, blogging is an important routine, or habit, I try to maintain, just like exercising, healthy eating, doing crossword puzzles and reading the daily business press. These are activities … Continue reading
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Working the data to find the needle in the haystack
“That was a fun exercise. But we never have data like that in the real world.” So said a participant in one of one of my recent workshops on Problem Solving, referring to a data field that allowed him to … Continue reading
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What do you do with expert advice?
The week before last on American Idol, Tommy Hilfiger was brought on to the show to provide fashion advice to the contestants. As usual, industry icon Jimmy Iovine, was there to offer musical wisdom. Tommy did not approve of the … Continue reading
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“…but if I leave that data out, I get….”
As March draws to a close, so do my posts on histograms. There are two important benefits of using histograms still to cover. The first is in identifying extreme data. Histograms help us quickly see these points – and the … Continue reading
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The histogram – the honey badger of statistical tools
I’ve dedicated my posts this month to showing you why the histogram is the Honey Badger of statistical tools. The histogram looks deep into our data, helping us see patterns, raise probing questions and identify causal relationships. One of the … Continue reading
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Histograms – the findings aren’t always so obvious
In each of my last two posts, I showed how histograms help identify distinct subgroups in our data, focus our analysis, and produce more powerful findings. I used real-world examples, but made-up data. Why? Because real-world data is messy, often … Continue reading
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