September 22, 2012 Meeting at ITT
Our guest speaker was Grant Stanley, CEO of Contemporary Analysis in Omaha. Mr. Stanley founded this company in 2008 and struggled to make it the successful company it is today. They use math to analyze human behavior and predictive behavior.
Mr. Stanley coined the term Data Science to describe the title of the employees that are trained in this field. He estimated that 140,000 to 160,000 additional Data Scientists are needed country-wide to meet the needs of this growing field. The areas of study for this field is Computer Science, Complex Scientific Method and Statistics. As of now, no degree program is available, but this may change as the field grows. He calls this field multi varied analysis.
Grant shared a page from his website that shows what his company can do. He stated that one company's report would have been 600 pages. What Contemporary Analysis created was a page that had drill down areas to see all of the information on those 600 pages but contained on one page. Each area was very small but the drill down areas shows information that is much easier to read. There are charts, timelines, and trends for the customer to view. Each report is specific to the customer.
Grant mentioned two visualization programs that he likes. One is Tableau and the other is Highcharts. Both are great tools for anyone to use.
Another area that Grant discussed was Pre-attentive Processing. This is where the brain is processing information long before the person is aware of the processing. Another process they tend to use is skewomorphic (not sure of the spelling!), where they make an object look more familiar so they can spot trends quickly.
Mr. Stanley also stated that they have a blog, blog,canworksmart.com, where we can check out the visualizations and dashboard that they created.
The industries that are interested in the Data Science field are Insurance, Construction, Mining, Health and Life Insurance, Automotive, Production, NSA and Retail. Grant stated that the retail companies use this data science information to create surveys and how, when and where customers shop.
This meeting was very interesting and we thank Grant Stanley for coming here to talk to us.
Our next meeting will be October 20, 2012 at 1pm in Theory 4. See you there!
