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Segmentation - A Few Practical Considerations

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Segmentation is a fundamental basis of developing understanding about customers and gaining insights in their motivations and interests. The quest for knowledge in all intelligent beings actually is about developing an approach to find an underlying basis of segregating objects and studying their characteristics. No knowledge could have been built by studying every object as unique. In fact Segmenting objects is instinctive for any curious mind. I would like to restrict this article to practical considerations involved in multivariate statistical methods for clustering analysis rather than conceptual considerations faced by marketing researchers. 1. To Standardize or Not: I have come across many researchers on either extreme of always standardizing all independent variables or always keeping all of them unstandardized. Either way this thumb rule is not a wise strategy. Changing scales through standardization affects the distances between cases and reduces the variabi...
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Real Data Scientists Do It Themselves

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Real Data Scientists Do It Themselves The ever increasing demand is far outpacing the supply of data science professionals. A lot of these gaps are filled in by professionals from different domains who are doubling up as data scientists. While these professionals are experts in their respective domains they rely on their academic training imparted to them about a decade or two ago. Around that time, the statistical techniques were not in vogue in subsequent work environment, they were not learnt with much interest and rigor. Also, the techniques were not subjected to large variety and volumes of data sets so their reliability and validity weren't put to stress test. Though these pseudo data scientists, relying on their training or some quick wiki reads or newsletters, are aware of various statistical techniques and even conceptually explain them to others but lack the rigor and know how to execute these techniques themselves. The rigor challenge does not pose much threa...
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Tectonic Shifts and Disruptive Changes in Business Analytics

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Tectonic Shifts and Disruptive Changes in Business Analytics Business Analytics is increasingly gaining prominence due to massive disruptive changes in almost all its constituents. Be it volume of data, be it types of data, be it currency of data, be it computing power, be it cheaper storage, be it tools and techniques, be it practices and methods, be it visualization, be it automation and customization of business processes, be it any aspect of data and analytics unprecedented changes are being witnessed. These changes are resulting in fundamentally new forms of products and services which were never imagined until recently. It is transforming practically every single aspect of all businesses at a magnitude and scope never imagined. The tsunamic magnitude and interdisciplinary scope of these changes have transitioned business analytics from nice to have to inevitable necessity at the core of businesses all over world. Origins of Business Analytics Originally, the te...
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