The mission of O’Reilly is to change the world by spreading the word of innovators. There are three people in the group; Roger Magoulas, who is on the data side, a quantitative analyst, and someone who handles operations. They pull data from the web as well as creating a careful taxonomy of their books.
Behind the Data Buzz:
- Stats and Analysis as the ‘sexy job of the coming era
- More data, more types of data, and big data tools
- Increased skills integration
- Cross-discipline
- Machine learning-natural language processing
- O’Reilly Strata Conference
There is so much more data collected today than ever before in the past. Machine learning and natural-language processing are becoming mainstream.
The Why of Data
Tell Stories, communicate results, social Input to Decision Processes, integrating data / analysis / modeling / predictions into real-time processes, feedback for users & self-tuning algorithms that stay relevant!
O’Reilly has a good data culture, starting at the top. There’s always a culture of questioning. Their taxonomy system makes it easy to go from overall data to drill down and see the situation. It’s important to look at how the data is presented. Presenting data in different ways can tell a different story.
In summary, data isn’t a blackbox, nor is it a magic bullet, but staying curious all the time can help direct your company to its goals. Data is about enlightenment, nirvana, bliss.