Tired and socially exhausted after a very nice company dinner (a common predicament for introverts), I was looking forward to some me-time on the taxi home. But it was not to be -- the taxi driver was a little chattier than I'd hoped. Having seen me catch his taxi amongst a group of foreigners whom presumably were my colleagues... Continue Reading →
How to convince the inconvincible
So how does one go about convincing the inconvincible (actually a proper word as per Webster)? Contrary to popular belief, there's no need to resort to heavy artillery. Just an interesting new tool in thinking I just learned from the book Decisive by Chip Heath (great book by the way). The tool is this question:... Continue Reading →
Great Digital Marketing Resource
I'm not sure if I'd ever mentioned the Occam's Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik, but even if I did it's probably worth bringing it up again -- I must say it's one of the most useful digital analytics/marketing sites I've visited. (I'd actually clean forgotten about it for some time, then while doing some research... Continue Reading →
Analysis vs. Process
I'm currently reading a very nice book (so far) by Dan Heath called Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work, where I came across the following passage on analysis vs. process: When the researchers compared whether process or analysis was more important in producing good decisions—those that increased revenues, profits, and market... Continue Reading →
Competitive Intelligence/Analysis
It's strange how today's the first day I realise how closely related competitive intelligence is to so much of what I've been doing and thinking and writing about in the fields of data analysis *slash* business analysis *slash * business intelligence *slash* data science etc. This discipline even has a professional society of called, aptly enough,... Continue Reading →
The Case for Modelling
Last week I wrote about the need for experimentation over models. Models are generally too abstract and far afield from reality that it’s hard to get any accurate answers. If you want to find out if an intervention works, try it. Do experiments on it. Carry out pilot projects and see what happens. Don’t model... Continue Reading →
Decision Making: The Need for Experimentation Over Models
Jim Manzi, in his book Uncontrolled, makes a very good point about analytical models and their shortcomings, in particular the need for experimentation (i.e. controlled interventions) to figure out what really happens in the real world (emphasis mine): Cost changes often could be predicted reliably through engineering studies. But when it came to predicting how... Continue Reading →
Big Data and Personality
Andrew McAfee posted about a very intriguing study on personality, gender and age in their relation to language. In essence, what the study did was to look at the correlation of people's Facebook statuses and their personality, gender, and age. You'll know why I say it's intriguing when you take a look at some of... Continue Reading →
The dismal failure of ‘Big Data’?
I just read an article on ZDnet on the dismal failure of 'Big Data' that was so bad I don't even know where to start. The author states that economics is a "big data" profession (why--what makes a profession "big data" or not?), and then goes on to say that because big data hasn't been... Continue Reading →
Some thoughts on the thinking behind building things
I’m going to write a bit about my thinking process whenever I build things, whether it’s websites, VBA applications, or financial models. I’m not too sure if this is going to be a “oh that’s so obvious why is he telling me this?” piece, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, one person’s normal behaviour... Continue Reading →
Donn, fragments 