/* ---- Google Analytics Code Below */

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Automating Data Science

Much in the news lately, have seen at least three other examples of automating major aspects of analytical method recently.  Can it put the data analyst out a job?   This has been much discussed for years.  The argument against was always the danger of producing analyses that would be subtly invalid and lead to business errors.  Or needed skilled statisticians and storytellers to explain them to management.   We did some things like this, but for narrow and focused domains.  But perhaps we were too cautious, the examples I have seen so far are impressive.  Warnings against problems in data can be supplied.  Domain context can be modeled into the problem.   Sponsors like Google, which works with lots of data problems, make this worth taking seriously.    Good piece, with examples of efforts underway.

See also Watson Analytics.

In Technology Review:
" ... Software that can discover patterns in data and write a report on its findings could make it easier for companies to analyze it... '     ...    By Tom Simonite

Now researchers backed by Google are developing software that could automate some of the work performed by such data scientists, in hopes of making sophisticated data skills more widely available. When fed raw data, the “automatic statistician” software spits out a report that uses words and charts to describe the mathematical trends it finds. .. "  

No comments: