Communications of the ACM
So, What's Your Algorithm?
Analytics will push down into people's daily business lives driven by extremely large data sets and supportive software.
Credit: Curierul National
The beginning of a transformation in day-to-day business decisions informed by real-time analytics mined from immense databases is in store for this year, as computers become sufficiently powerful and nuanced to help reduce human bias from the decision-making process. Such systems are now capable of crunching billions of bits of data, analyzing them through self-learning algorithms, and packaging the insights for instant usage. "We've just got to the point where the technology really starts to work," says Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch.
One example of the benefits of such systems is offered by Mu Sigma founder Dhiraj C. Rajaram, who says that a drug saleswoman will soon have real-time analytics that suggest she concentrate on doctors who spent time on social networks that morning, and are therefore more likely to influence colleagues. However, he cautions that as analytics become routine, adaptation and business cycles will be ramped up even faster than they currently are.
"As computers become better and better, our lives are becoming more and more complex," Rajaram notes. "They create new problems as much as they solve old ones."
From The Wall Street Journal
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