The Analytics Revolution

Preface

Like manufacturing in the 1800s, the field of analytics needs to go through its own industrial revolution. Analytics processes today are usually created in an artisanal fashion with a lot of care and customization. That's okay in many cases, and the artisanal approach often still is appropriate. However, we must also push analytics forward to another level of scale and impact. The industrial revolution took manufacturing processes from an artisanal practice to a modern technological marvel that is able to manufacture quality items at massive scale. The same type of revolution must happen with analytics.

Centuries ago, if a bowl was needed, then a visit to a potter was necessary. A potter can make a custom bowl to fit any need. The problem is that such an approach isn't scalable. The limited pool of potters can create only so many bowls in a day. Today most bowls are created on a large scale in manufacturing plants. Although it is still possible to purchase a custom bowl from a potter, it isn't cost effective to use that approach except for special situations. Besides cost considerations, people today also often prefer the consistency of a mass-manufactured product. However, even in today's world, bowls don't magically appear. Someone still has to come up with a design, build initial prototypes, create a mold, and validate that the mold will produce the right bowl time and time again. Only then is an assembly line turned on to manufacture the bowl at scale.

A similar ...