The Data Exchange Podcast: Ira Cohen on the evolution of tools for analysts.
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In this episode of the Data Exchange I speak with Ira Cohen: co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at Anodot1, a startup that uses AI for business monitoring. Ira and I have a shared interest in business intelligence software and other tools for analysts. I recently co-wrote a post on the impact of automation in BI tools and I was eager to explore the landscape of tools for analysts with Ira.
Some recent trends include the introduction of new user interfaces and new modeling techniques. We’ve had tools that open up advanced analytics, statistical modeling, and machine learning to analysts, Ira and I discuss the introduction of tools that allow analysts to run realistic simulations and what-if scenarios.
These new tools are contributing to the evolution of the role of analysts. In a previous episode with Bahman Bahmani, he described training and assigning analysts to focus on tasks such as data preparation and model testing. Along these lines, Ira speculates that we will increasingly see two sets of analysts focused on two different areas:
- ❛ The analyst role is going to get split. There will be analysts focused on data pipelines and there will be analysts tasked with generating insights.
… For analysts that are supposed to generate the insights, they should go learn the capabilities of machine learning algorithms, so they can leverage them. They don’t have to know how to code them.
… For the analysts charged with getting more data for their organizations, they will need to learn what are potential sources of data.
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Related content and resources:
- A video version of this conversation is available on our YouTube channel.
- AI and Automation Meet BI
- Visual Data Computing Unleashed
- Ben Lorica, Mikio Braun, and Jenn Webb: “Key AI and Data Trends for 2021”
- Bahman Bahmani: “Business at the speed of AI: Lessons from Rakuten”
- Download the 2020 NLP Survey Report and learn how companies are using and implementing natural language technologies.
- Dan Geer and Andrew Burt: “Security and privacy for the disoriented”
- Rumman Chowdury: “The State of Responsible AI”
- Krishna Gade: “What businesses need to know about model explainability”
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[1] I am an advisor to Anodot.
[Image: INTERNET NETWORK DATA DRAWING from Pixy.org.]