What’s Predictive Analytics All About?

Predictive analytics or predictive modelling can be defined, as a commonly used statistical technique to predict future behavior. The solutions provided here are a part of data mining technology, which works with the analysis of historical and current data, thus generating a model, which will aid in predicting future outcomes. It basically uses trends that have exited in the past and tries to apply them to the future, mainly to check their relevancy. Technology has somewhat achieved this phenomena already, although we still have a long way to go about it. Have you ever noticed, if you look for a certain product online, say in the morning, you get advertisements about the similar or related products throughout the day? For instance if a customer purchases a camera from any e-commerce website, then by default he would also become an instant customer for all of its accessories, while at the same time he’d want to buy, say a lens of the same brand, so no question of competition here. This was a singular, independent example. But, predictive analytics actually works with thousands of categories, millions of options, end number of visitors and brands on a daily basis.

The internet has become a very rooted and important part of us today, may it be in terms of our work life or our personal space. While a majority of us have already adjusted our lifestyles around the internet of things, there exist a few glitches every now and then, which have the ability to tick us off. For instance, there are a lot of times when you are on the lookout for a really good pair of trainers, while whatever advertisement you see on the internet that very day, is about everything but what you were looking to buy. Wouldn’t it be beyond amazing if all or any advertisements you see, anytime of the day or anywhere for that matter, are only about the products that you would want to buy; something which is acutely specific to your lifestyle and preferences. It’s basically going to the supermarket and the first four aisles, would have all the items on your list, saves time and is extremely efficient. The target marketing process, which we all experience on a daily basis is a result of a process called as predictive analytics.

If you are a data analytics aspirant, looking to work in this sphere, most of your work would revolve around piecing together predictive models. You will be collating data, which would either belong to the customer like their previous purchases, or the specifics they provide at that moment. This data then would be cleaned and arranged by you so as to smoothen the process of analysis. The key point here is that this would have to be in sync with the various business hypothesis. The final stage basically deals with these predictive modelling techniques to result in extracting various valuable business insights. Professionals with these kind of skill set are very much demand, which why there are a lot of institutes, like for instance Imarticus Learning, which offer specialization courses in data analytics tools like R Programming, SAS, Hadoop and others.

Still, in its preliminary stages, imagine the kind of revolutionary changes that would be made for the human kind, if illness could be detected decades before they’d happen? It’s not a faraway fantasy anymore.