Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die

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"Mesmerizing & fascinating..." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer "The Freakonomics of big data." Stein Kretsinger, founding executive of Advertising.com Award-winning | Used by over 30 universities | Translated into 9 languages An introduction for everyone. In this rich, fascinating surprisingly accessible introduction, leading expert Eric Siegel reveals how predictive analytics works, and how it affects everyone every day. Rather than a how to for hands-on techies, the book serves lay readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques. Prediction is booming. It reinvents industries and runs the world. Companies, governments, law , hospitals, and universities are seizing upon the power. These institutions predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die. Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats risk, boosts sales, fortifies care, streamlines manufacturing, conquers spam, optimizes social networks, toughens crime fighting, and wins elections. How? Prediction is powered by the world's most potent, flourishing unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn. Predictive Analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future drives millions of decisions more effectively, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate. In this lucid, captivating introduction now in its Revised and Updated edition former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction: * What type of m