Category Archive for: Data Analysis

Nate Silver Called All 50 States…

and was only off by 400,000 on the popular vote.  How ya like big data now?  VentureBeat has the story. (VB) See out previous coverage of Nate Silver here.

Uh-Oh. Master Limited Partnerships Continue to Go Mainstream after 10 Years of Outperformance

The New York Times has joined the drumbeat of MLP coverage, noting how the relatively high yields and tax advantages of MLPs are drawing investors. (NYT) Here’s some facts that should give everyone pause before investing in these complex products: They have an average 16.7 percent annual return for the past 10 years This return…

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Law Firm Economics

Bloomberg Law has a fantastic interview with Bruce Macewen of Adam Smith, Esq. that should be required watching for every law firms managing partner. Macewen discusses what he calls “suicide pricing”, or pricing work at cost, just to meet overhead. The problems are structural, as the cost structure of most law firms is not in…

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Finra’s New Suitability Rule 2111 Living Links Visualization

Here’s a visualization of the new Finra Suitability Rule 2111 with clickable marks.  (Just click on any of the colored marks to be taken to the relevant Finra Rule or NTM.  Roll over the Rule or NTM title to get the full title and subtitle.) Powered by Tableau

Quantum Computing is Almost Here (You only need 4 degrees kelvin and magnetic shielding)

Tom Simonite of the MIT technology review has a first rate piece on how (eight year) startup D-Wave is closing in on quantum computing. (MIT)  Machine learning people will appreciate that the D-Wave quantum computer is designed to solve complex optimization problems.  For those of you new to optimization and quantum computing, here’s a succinct…

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Data Scientists and the New Cool

Tom Davenport has an excellent mid-lenth piece out in the Harvard Business Review about how data science is the new sexy job.  Tom has been writing about this for quite some time.  (HBR)  Of particular note was his description of the Insight Data Science Program, which is a post-doc Silicon Valley feeder five week training…

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CIA Archives on the Tradecraft of Analysis

I just discovered the CIA has a Center for the Study of Intelligence that publishes unclassified research on a quarterly basis.  This is a nice resource of tradecraft ideas for anyone in the forensic analysis business.  The archives go back to 2Q 2008.  Happy reading.  (CIA)

Predictive Analytics Coming to a College Near You (To Pick Your Classes for You)

Here’s a piece from the Center for Digital Eduction about how predictive analytics are making inroads into the slow moving world of college education.  The impetus is cost savings and graduating students in four years.  The upshot: an algo might match you up with certain professors/classes.

Predicting Sporting Events and Presidential Elections

Sports Illustrated had a short but entertaining article on Nate Silver, which can be found here.  Silver is a predictive savant and has been turning his powers to all manner of events.  His political blog can be found here.

The Need for Speed in Analytic Hardware

Steve Lohr had a typically good piece in The New York Times on how database hardware is catching up to analytics software and how the results will be powerful.  You can read the article here. Some think this represents a one of those discontinuous leaps in computing equilibrium.  Here’s the money quote: Advances in such…

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