By Paulo Albuquerque, Asst. Professor of Marketing, University of Rochester, Simon Graduate School of Business

Give a college student a question and you’ll get an answer. Give them an answer, and you’ll get a lot of questions. The right questions can trigger responses that represent an entirely new way to look at solutions to today’s most pressing societal and business challenges.

This is exactly what happened at the Simon Graduate School of Business where I teach business students to take an analytical approach to marketing. Instead of the usual case competition where students are asked to develop a strategy to address a specific business challenge, this time the university collaborated with IBM and regional business leaders to look at ways IBM’s Watson technology could be applied to a variety of industries.

Entering a new era of computing, Watson represents a way to pique the interest of students in areas such as analytics and cognitive computing. The Watson system has the extraordinary ability to learn and become more accurate over time.

At the Simon Graduate School of Business, we aim to familiarize students with new technologies and provide students with the chance to take a hands-on approach looking at how technology could be used in business. This required students to think critically about combining technology tools with fundamental business practices to uncover new solutions and market opportunities.

Specifically, over the course of their studies, students at the Simon School master the FACt approach (Frame, Analyze, Communicate) to handle unstructured problems: they first frame the issue in the context of economics, analyze each dimension of the problem, and then come to a decision that must be communicated throughout the organization. With the help of IBM, the case competition brought the learning experience one step further. The students were asked to look at industries that the Watson technology could be used to manage information from a variety of sources to create long-lasting value to all business stakeholders.

Marketing has always required a combination of access to data, along with the smarts to know which data to use and when. What’s different today is the massive amount of data — called Big Data — that’s flowing at incredible speeds online and through mobile devices. Consumers are making their presence known in new ways on Facebook and Twitter, and on thousands of new channels cropping up inside mobile marketplaces. For today’s students, navigating all these social media channels is part of their DNA. It’s natural for students to poll Facebook friends for a restaurant recommendation, check in on Foursquare once they get there and then post a Yelp review when they get home that night. But how can they use these channels to solve real-world business problems and create new market opportunities?

What we witnessed during the case competition was a remarkable process among students. They started with open ended questions and began to apply the Watson technology in entirely new ways. Beyond IBM’s current work applying Watson in healthcare and financial services, students researched how Watson could be used to make more accurate weather predictions and help organizations allocate resources during times of disaster and crisis, taking the aggravation out of travel by reducing wait times in airports, or make mining for natural resources such as oil, gas and minerals safer and more effective.

We had 25 students participate in the Watson case competition, each with their own ideas. All were good, and some were excellent. You can read about the three standout ideas here (link to press release). The competition has inspired students to take a more creative approach to business and societal challenges. It’s a new way of thinking, innovating, and creating new business opportunities that our future leaders must be prepared to deliver by combining business acumen and technical savvy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, ibm watson, Smarter Education

I just returned from the biennial “Gathering 4 Gardner” meeting that honors the achievements of Martin Gardner (1914-2010), the American mathematics and science writer. The conference promotes new and accessible ideas in recreational mathematics, mathematical art, magic, puzzles, and philosophy.

The conference had special meaning to me.  My own interest in science, math, and science-fiction writing started in high school, after receiving a copy of Gardner’s The Unexpected Hanging and Other Mathematical Diversions, an early collection of some of his columns from Scientific American. The book’s tales of the fourth dimension, and matchbox computers for playing tic-tac-toe, energized my imagination.

Today, I work at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. For decades, I have been intrigued by a huge poster by American designers Charles and Ray Eames, adjacent to our Watson library, which features a chronological view of mathematics through the biography of great mathematicians.  Gauss, Euler, Napier, Hilbert, and more!

One could stare at the poster for hours and never be bored with its intricate details. To mark the impact of math on the world, IBM has created an iPad app based on this poster, Minds of Modern Mathematics, which you can download here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It may surprise you to learn that my fascination with this poster, and with Martin Gardner, played a significant role in the creation of my recent work, The Math Book: From Pythagoras to the 57th Dimension. In fact, I was delighted that Gardner lived to see the book, which is dedicated to him.

The book is motivated by my interest in bringing science, mathematics and creativity to the broader public.  I’d like to share an excerpt:

Mathematics has permeated every field of scientific endeavor and plays an invaluable role in biology, physics, chemistry, economics, sociology, and engineering.  Mathematics can be used to help explain the colors of a sunset or the architecture of our brains. Mathematics helps us build supersonic aircraft and roller coasters, simulate the flow of Earth’s natural resources, explore subatomic quantum realities, and image faraway galaxies. Mathematics has changed the way we look at the cosmos.

American educator David Berlinski once wrote, “The computer has… changed the very nature of mathematical experience, suggesting for the first time that mathematics, like physics, may yet become an empirical discipline, a place where things are discovered because they are seen.”   Indeed, we are continuing to encounter mathematical results discovered with the aid of computer-based tools.

Today, we use computers to help us reason beyond the limitations of our own intuition. Experiments with computers are leading mathematicians to discoveries and insights never dreamed of before the ubiquity of computers.

Of course, companies like IBM are interested in analytics — the application of computer technology, mathematics, and operations research to solve big practical problems.  Massive-scale analytics can help us identify business trends, transform the way we approach education, assist law-enforcement agencies, generally change the way people use information, and much more….

Returning to science history, I believe that studying science and mathematics through the telescope of history has profound value for students and anyone curious about the evolution of thought and the limits of mind.  When we study the history of mathematics, we see the challenges of both amateur and professional mathematicians who persevered; we see abacuses morphing into slide rules, and into calculators and computers.

Our brains, which evolved to make us run from lions on the African savannah, may not be constructed to penetrate the infinite veil of reality. We may need mathematics, science, computers, brain augmentation, and even literature, art, and poetry to help us tear away the veils.

Dr. Clifford A. Pickover is a prolific author and futurist, having published more than 40 books, translated into over a dozen languages.  He has also written more than 200 articles on topics in science, art, and mathematics.  He holds more than 100 U.S. patents for inventions dealing with computing technologies.

Technorati Tags: cliff pickover, David Berlinski, Eames, IBM, martin gardner, Math, mathematics, Minds of Modern Mathematics, Scientific American, the math book

As globally-integrated firms like IBM are discovering, the roles of formal authority and hierarchy are declining in the workplace. What remains, however, is the core purpose they served – the need to influence others, to make a difference in other people’s actions and the thoughts and feelings that drive those actions.

Thus, the key challenge for IBM and others is this: if authority and hierarchy are waning, what are now the primary tools of influence available to those responsible for the performance of others? How, for example, can IBM’s Global Enablement Teams of senior leaders from mature economies best influence and develop the skills of local managers in emerging economies?

In this new world, we believe there are three key tools of influence, which we call the three imperatives of leadership:

Manage Yourself: Your ability to influence others begins with you and who you are as a person, and the most important feature here is whether people trust you. Are they confident you will do the right thing? Effective leaders now build relationships based on trust, not authority or social ties like friendship. And they do that by earning people’s confidence in their competence and character, the key components of trust. People trust someone who knows what to do and how to do it (competence) and who intends to do the right thing (character). Trust is the foundation of all influence other than coercion.

Manage Your Network: Interdependence has always been a hallmark of all organizations – no person or group works in isolation. But as organizations become more amorphous and fluid, as they spread around the world and embrace diverse cultures, this ability to connect and collaborate with those you don’t control grows even more crucial. It’s the only way to wield broad influence in the political environment that exists in all organizations.

Manage Your Team: Whether a group formally works for you or you assembled its members voluntarily for a specific reason, you must convert this group into a true team whose members are mutually committed to a common purpose – a group with such strong interpersonal ties that they believe “we” will succeed or fail together. When a team “clicks” in this way around a common purpose, its members are more committed, work harder, and are more productive and innovative because no member wants to let the others down. No leader can make a group into a team by decree. She can only foster the conditions that create a team and then manage the team through the social ties that bind members around a common purpose.

This strategic approach to management and leadership offers clear advantages:

The imperatives don’t depend on authority or hierarchy. They apply whether your responsibility for a group is assigned by an organization, conferred by members of the group itself, or assumed by you as you voluntarily step up to leadership.

The three imperatives are a better way to think about management and leadership than the hodge-podge of generic activities that traditionally defined those roles. Instead of performing 10-15 activities – motivating, controlling, communicating, and so on – you can focus on three key strategies that provide a simple but powerful framework for all your work. There’s no need to ask, “When do I apply the imperatives?” because the answer is, “Always – everything you do is an opportunity to apply and pursue them.”

The three imperatives are unlikely to change because they work across generations and cultures, all of which value trust, collaborative relationships, and commitment to a valued mutual purpose.

Finally, the imperatives are a guide to personal growth. They are the key areas that you must master on your years-long journey as a leader, guideposts you can use to assess your progress every day.

Linda A. Hill is Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and chair of the school’s Leadership Initiative.  Kent Lineback, now a coach and writer, was a manager and executive for nearly 30 years. They are co-authors of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)  www.beingtheboss.com

Here’s another point of view from the NextGen Leaders series, from Wharton’s Mike Useem.

Technorati Tags: emerging markets, Global, globalization, Harvard, Harvard Business School, Leadership, skills

Education is the foundation of any country’s future. It provides a path to good jobs and higher earning power. It can also foster the cross-border, cross-cultural collaboration required to solve the most challenging problems of our time.

One hundred years after the U.S. education system first expanded and transformed to prepare children for a booming industrial economy, a new kind of economy based on services and knowledge-based systems is changing the education landscape again. If we want our children to achieve their potential — and realize the potential of a smarter planet — then school itself needs to get a lot smarter.

IBM has a long legacy in working to improve our school systems. In the mid-90s, then-CEO Lou Gerstner hosted the first of three National Education Summits as part of the company’s Reinventing Education program, which focused on public school reform. Two decades later, IBM is at the forefront of developing the deep analytics technologies that are poised to radically transform the way we approach education and the insight we have into each and every student.

Unfortunately schools and higher education systems today are straining under budget cuts, while the demand for students with specialized skills is on the rise. The problem is so serious that the U.S. Department of Education has allocated $5.3 billion for Race to the Top, a national competition to promote education reform strategies. One of its primary focus areas is building data systems that measure student success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices. Put simply, the idea is to use data to get closer to students to help solve problems.

System-wide improvements in education require big-picture thinking. A holistic, accurate vision starts with a clear understanding of each student and school. By capturing and conveying data, such as attendance, grades and enrollment in activities, schools gain a real-time perspective into how a student or school is doing, where intervention is needed, and learn from best practices being implemented at other schools.

Inspired by this idea of using data to get closer to students and solve problems, IBM is launching a new education platform together with Desire2Learn, a company that is providing learning environments to some of the world’s largest public school systems, including The New York City Department of Education.

In the past, IBM has introduced analytics solutions for education that focus on sifting through large quantities of data and providing intelligence at a systems level across institutions, districts and states. These big picture insights are valuable and can tell us a lot about student achievement and areas for improvement. But with Desire2Learn’s student and teacher focused learning platform, which offers analytics on a personal level, we can help teachers and students glean insights that apply specifically to them.  These combined qualities make this solution truly comprehensive in a way that has not been available to schools in the past.

It is amazing what kinds of improvements you can make schools when you take this transformational approach. In Hamilton County, Tenn., which includes the city of Chattanooga, administrators reduced the dropout rate by 25% by figuring out which students were at risk of leaving school. A key indicator turned out to be students who were two or three years older than normal for their grades. When those students were flagged, schools gave them extra attention and kept more of them in school.

When you put smart tools in the hands of students and teachers, there are almost no limits to the types of data which can be captured and the ways in which it can be used. For example, a math teacher with a total view of a student’s academic records might realize that the reason a student is struggling with word problems is actually because of a problem in reading comprehension. In another instance, a gifted student who isn’t being challenged by their normal course work can access advanced lesson plans or network with a mentor at a university.

These are the kinds of insights we need if we are going to solve the very real problem of transforming our nation’s schools for the future. Our economy depends on an education system built to bring us the next generation of innovators, and I am excited to help lead IBM’s efforts to make this vision a reality.

Technorati Tags: Desire2Learn, IBM

[Editor's note: To celebrate the history of math and its impact on the world, IBM has released Minds of Modern Mathematics, a free iPad app that re-imagines a classic 50-foot infographic on the history of math that was part of the Mathematica exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.  Eric Siegel, director and chief content officer of the New York Hall of Science, says the exhibit remains relevant to this day.  Join the conversation on Twitter: #math #Eames]

In 1961, IBM commissioned Charles and Ray Eames to create an exhibition for the California Museum of Science and Industry.  The resulting exhibition, called Mathematica: a World of Numbers, is a founding document of interactive STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) exhibitions.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As Charles Eames observed, Mathematica was intended to enlighten the amateur without embarrassing the specialist. In the early 2000’s, the California Science Center — as it is now called — refurbished and exhibition and put it on the road.

At the end of that run, the New York Hall of Science (NYSCI) in Queens, NY, purchased the exhibition, and spent the following three years refurbishing and gently updating Mathematica.

There was a duplicate copy made of the exhibition, most of which is still on display at the Museum of Science in Boston.  NYSCI now has the only complete copy of this brilliant integration of creativity and scientific thinking.  And it is so appropriate to have it at NYSCI, which also grew from the mid-sixties optimism and enthusiastic public embrace of science.

As you can imagine, I welcomed the news that Mathematica has inspired an iPad app, Minds of Modern Mathematics.

One of the few memories I have of the 1964 Worlds Fair is a featured element in Mathematica: a large probability machine in which balls ping their way through a kind of pachinko machine and settle in a normal distribution curve at the bottom.  The brilliant thing about this piece is the theatricality of the sound and drama of the balls tumbling down, combined with a quite subtle and deep explanation of normal distribution curves.

Unlike many contemporary exhibits, there is a fair amount of accompanying text presented in an in idiosyncratic style that reflects the Eames’ fascination with the circus.

In addition to probability, there is a brilliant interactive on projective geometry (not a phrase that I ever imagined I would say) that never fails to elicit a “wow” from visitors and a beautiful and elegant series of boxes that dip into soapy water revealing bubble coatings that illustrate the principal of least surfaces.  Children love pressing their noses up against the glass cover of the Celestial Mechanics vortex, watching steel balls race each other down into a “gravity well.”

Above is the Mathematica Timeline as it is installed at NY Hall of Science, with a computer kiosk extending into the 21st century.

The exhibition is timeless, other than updating some internal mechanisms, we have not found any need or reason to modify it, with one exception.  One entire wall of Mathematica features a detailed timeline of the development of math thinking, featuring thinkers as far back as 1000 AD, and continuing until 1960.  Of course much has happened since 1960, so we have made a interactive computer kiosk that continues the timeline into the 21st century.

We have long been familiar with the videos that accompanied or amplified aspects of Mathematica, but have not had them on display as they were not displayed with the original exhibition.  But the Math Peep Shows, and above all Powers of 10, are masterpieces of translating complex topics in science,  math and big data to a lay audience without “dumbing down.”

You can follow Eric at theworks.nysci.org and on Twitter @erictsiegel

Technorati Tags: apple, Eames, IBM, ipad, Los Angeles, Math, Minds of Modern Mathematics, New York Hall of Science, World's Fair

The City of Chicago has just announced its intention to open five grades nine through 14 schools that will confer both the high school diploma and an associate degree in technology — creating a direct connection from high school to college to careers. Visit the Citizen IBM blog to see what Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has to say about the important roles these Early College STEM Schools will play in the city’s economic development and jobs strategy.

Based on the recommendations of an IBM Smarter Cities Challenge team, Chicago’s new schools will be patterned after New York’s Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH). As with P-TECH — a partnership among the New York City Public Schools, The City University of New York, and IBM — each new Chicago institution will operate as a public-private partnership among the school system, the community college system, and a corporate sponsor. These collaborations will ensure the creation of rigorous and relevant curricula — including workplace skills — that will prepare students for meaningful careers and/or further study. Graduates will then be first in line for positions with their schools’ corporate partners.

The Smarter Cities team developed Chicago’s Roadmap for Career and Technical Education, which the city will use in conjunction with the STEM Pathways to College and Careers School Guide that was developed after the opening of New York City’s P-TECH. You can download the IBM Playbook from Rahm Emanuel’s blog.

Technorati Tags: litow, p-tech, Smarter Cities Challenge, STEM

Today researchers in life sciences are required to work with and analyze giga and terabyte size data sets. Similarly, students on university campuses walk around with hard drives in their backpacks with terabytes of research data. Much of this data moves at variable speeds, and is in different formats fueled by a new generation of high throughput data production technologies such as DNA sequencers and super resolution microscopes.

In many ways, big data has been around us for a long time. Phone call records, credit card transactions and financial trading logs have been creating information and challenges for decades. However, now it is the proliferation of sources: social networks, logs of Internet activities, eCommerce, video, image and SMS records that are requiring organizations expand their capabilities to integrate and manage these large data sets. The fact that 80 percent of this information is unstructured adds another dimension to the challenge which we also face in life sciences research.

An ability to work with and analyze this big data are essential skills that every life scientist must possess. But how do you prepare students for emerging roles like that of the data scientist? You give them the audacity — and training — to formulate research hypothesis that push big data technologies beyond current capabilities.

Data scientists go beyond simply capturing, cleaning, securing, and analyzing big data; they need to interpret it for a greater good.

As educators, we must provide our students with a strong interdisciplinary skill set including hands on experience with technologies and tools that will be key to leveraging big data. This means today’s graduates need a mix of technical and business skills that are highly sought after in academia and industry.

Our efforts at iPlant collaborative are directed towards building cyber-infrastructure that enables plant biologists to efficiently analyze large data sets and we are using familiar open source technologies that power many of our big data initiatives. Our goal is to provide students access and training to all levels of our infrastructure that are designed to leverage big data

I recently invited Anjul Bhambhri, IBM’s vice president of big data, to speak at our ongoing technology lecture series at iPlant about big data skills. She discussed during the virtual lecture the many ways that businesses are analyzing big data, such as for fraud protection, neonatal analysis, traffic control, customer retention, and clean energy.

Anjul also answered questions from current students and professionals on what opportunities are available for those interested in pursuing big data careers. The view from the classroom is optimistic as nearly every industry can benefit from employees that assume the role of data scientist.

Working closely with our industry partners like IBM, we can ensure that our graduates are well versed in big data skills before they enter the workforce.

To learn more about our own big data initiatives at iPlant collaborative visit http://www.iplantcollaborative.org/discover/data-store. To learn more about our project go to http://www.iplantcollaborative.org/.

Read IBM Vice President of Big Data Anjul Bhambhri on What Is A Data Scientist?

Technorati Tags: academia, Analytics, anjul bhambhri, Big Data, skills, university of arizona

By Steve Canepa, General Manager, Global Media & Entertainment Industry

February seems to be a month of excitement for all movie, television and sports enthusiasts. It’s that time of year – Super Bowl madness and Oscar Buzz – frenzy so electric that it transcends worlds – into the social media world. Think about it, how long does it take for you to see a Tweet or Facebook post once you hear the winner for Best Motion Picture or following the first touch-down? Seconds?

Information flows so quickly that Twitter alone is handling approximately 35MB of data a second, every second. The majority of this social media data represents public ‘streams of consciousness’, data that approximates human thought and speech, what we in the business call unstructured data.  But, as anyone who has filled in a tax form, booked a flight or applied for a loan knows: computers prefer data with structure, data fields that have entries in strictly controlled formats.

The good news is change is coming. Computers are becoming smarter about unstructured data (unstructured data isn’t just natural language … it’s photos, videos, emails, tweets, audio, sensor data, mobile device data).  For example, using advanced analytics technologies and natural language processing we can now begin to understand the patterns behind human expression. Not just ‘key words’ that have been identified and indexed, but all words, as we type them or say them.  We may have spent most of the computing age training humans to communicate with computers, using methods optimized for the machines, but today the reverse is happening. We’re now training computers to communicate with us and understand us in our own language. It is not easy. It is as the IBM Research team behind Watson declared, a Grand Challenge. But it’s a challenge that can lead to some very important and far-reaching results.

Watson represents a pinnacle achievement in Deep QA and natural language processing but there are many routes to the top and plenty of room for additional exploration and discovery. The team of researchers, students and faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Innovation Lab are taking a slightly different approach to the Grand Challenge. Rather than using the Answer Question formulation of Jeopardy!, they are applying IBM analytics software, and some very smart coding and modeling, to train computers to understand and analyze Tweets. The project is part of an ongoing collaboration between the lab and IBM to explore how technology can be used by organizations from news outlets and journalists to movie studios, broadcasters and retailers to better understand, respond, and predict public sentiment. To date, the model has been applied to film forecasting, the World Series and fashion retailing trends, in an effort to identify social media trends and better understand public opinions. For example, just last week IBM and USC analyzed millions of public tweets to determine the fans’ sentimental Super Bowl Quarterback favorite – Tom Brady or Eli Manning. Just like the game, Eli Manning in a late game-changing move, overtook Tom Brady as the Social Media MVP with 66% positive sentiment vs. Brady’s 61%.

But why stop at the World Series and Super Bowl? AIL and IBM are now collaborating with the Los Angeles Times to measure moviegoer sentiment toward the upcoming Academy Awards race.  Dubbed a ‘Senti Meter’, we’re analyzing Oscar- related positive and negative opinions shared via millions of tweets to determine who will win “The People’s Oscars”. The project has been profiled by the Los Angeles Times and we can all follow the evolving sentiment for Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Picture categories over the next two weeks by visiting http://graphics.latimes.com/senti-meter/.

This project is much more than just analyzing which best picture or movie star fans are rooting for – it’s an example of how movie studios can better understand their audience preferences and use social media to improve their marketing programs and in turn improve box office results.   There is no doubt that the Twitterverse and other social media platforms are changing communication as we know it. Tweets, Facebook and blog posts are becoming a vital resource for many organizations including the media industry to identify trends, inform reporting and understand as well as connect with their audience.

Think of how much change in the last year has been driven or expressed or reported in social media. Think how much social value could have been derived if we’d had the ability to understand and react to these social media conversations and sentiments – in context and in real time. We can now analyze the vast river of public data that streams from Twitter in its unstructured complexity, and apply a level of sentiment to the commentary. In other words the computer can now determine, with the certainty level of a non-native speaker, that the tweet it just analyzed expressed a positive or negative sentiment and how strongly that sentiment was stated – all in real-time. We can then apply this analysis to deliver business value – the effectiveness of marketing activities, customer responses to services, products and promotions, the impact of advertising, or the reaction to real world events…   the list is limitless.

This new capability will eventually deliver solutions founded on semantic analysis of Big Data that are only just now being imagined. And it will happen faster than we expect. Stay tuned, there is more on the way….

Learn more about the work IBM and USC are doing on social media sentiment http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/36720.wss

Technorati Tags: Academy Awards, Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, Education, Entertainment, entrepreneur, IBM, IBM Research, Jeopardy, Media, nfl, Oscars, picture stories, predictive analytics, retail, smarter commerce, Smarter Planet, social business, social media, storytelling, twitter, Watson

By Mo Zhou, Senior Consultant, IBM Global Business Services

One year ago, I was thrilled to watch IBM’s Watson computer win on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! at a special viewing party at Yale University. It was the second year of my MBA program, and I had already accepted a job offer from IBM, so I was rooting for my own team. I was so excited that I stayed until the very end to get the last Watson T-shirt they handed out as a door prize. Today, my profile picture on Facebook shows me proudly wearing the shirt.

So, you could say I’m a poster child for IBM.

But I really represent something that’s much bigger than IBM. I’m pursuing one of the most exciting and important new professions that’s coming on strong in the 21^st century: business analytics. I’m a  consultant who combines expertise in analytics technology with business know-how. I call myself a business strategy quant.

I had another thrill a couple of weeks ago when Steve Lohr of the New York Times interviewed me for a story about the need for more people with my skills to turn the huge amount of data in our world into useful insights. The story was published today and will hopefully encourage even more students to follow my professional path.

Business analytics is the practice of using some of the latest advances in computer science, involving really sophisticated mathematical algorithms, to help businesses work better. The way I think about it, I’m using my skills to build a smarter planet–one organization at a time.

I never could have imagined this life when I was a child growing up in China. I dreamed of being a secret agent, like 007. But what really fascinated me was numbers. I competed in the Chinese Mathematics Olympiad, and, after my family moved to California, I completed college-level advanced calculus courses during my junior year in high school. Even though few girls study electrical engineering, I chose it as my major at the University of Illinois because my high school science adviser told me it was the toughest course. Later, at Yale, I chose strategy as a focus partly because it was a gap in my skills.  It was there that I got my first taste of what consulting is really like by participating in a Yale course sponsored by IBM where I advised a real company. My husband says I always pick the hard challenges that make my life miserable. I love what I do, though.

At IBM, I’m on the road most weeks working with clients. For my last project, I helped a health insurance company come up with a strategy for educating what it expects to be a flood of new individual customers after health care reform goes into effect in 2014. I used text analytics and association algorithms to help them discover the most important topics for each kind of customer.

I’m like a detective. I help my clients uncover insights that are hidden in massive amounts of data. And I help them develop strategies that are driven by facts rather than by hunches and intuition.

I considered working for companies in Silicon Valley, but I chose IBM because it has the strongest tradition of getting patents and producing cutting-edge technology. More young people like me are realizing what a great company IBM is. Watson helps change perceptions. I think IBM is the company of the future—where people like me can help build a smarter planet. I plan on working here for a long time.

Technorati Tags: Analytics, Big Data, business analytics, data, Education, IBM, Jeopardy, predictive analytics, Smarter Planet, Watson

John Squire is IBM’s director of Digital Marketing and Analytics.

Updated Post
AN UPSET IN THE MAKING
3 February 2012, 11:30 AM Eastern

Just like on the field, Eli Manning is riding a late surge to overtake Tom Brady in the IBM and USC analysis of Super Bowl XLVI social media sentiment.  Overnight results of Super Bowl Twitter buzz drove Giants quarterback Eli Manning’s ‘T score’ for positive sentiment ahead of Tom Brady. Manning now leads with 66% vs. Brady’s 61%, which represents an 8-point shift compared to the previous day. In another interesting development positive sentiment for Giants head coach jumped dramatically with his score rating increasing to 76% positive. That places Coach Coughlin above all of the players and coaches on both teams.

This day-to-day shift in Super Bowl fan sentiment illustrates the speed at which consumer sentiments can shift online — a factor that businesses are watching closely due to the potential impact on their brand equity and sales.

By applying analytics in social media settings we can identify nuances – positive, negative, irony, snarky vs. sincerity, in real-time.  That’s enough time to help an organization, or in this case professional athletes, adjust their comments and actions to dramatically (and positively) impact their brands.

Original Post
SUPER BOWL ANALYSIS TAKES US BEYOND THE TWEETS
2 February 2012

One of the most dramatic NFL games ever played was Super Bowl XLII pitting the undefeated (18–0) New England Patriots led by record-setting quarterback Tom Brady against the surprising NY Giants with young, unproven Eli Manning at the helm.   A thrilling, some say shocking victory for the Giants ended the Patriots bid to be the only 19–0 undefeated champion in league history.  And now Super Bowl XLVI –  The Rematch —   anticipated to be the most watched American television show in history, promises to take social media to a whole new level.

As my colleague, and former NFL player Kevin Nosbusch posted on Wednesday, IBM and the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab are conducting the first sentiment analysis of the two Super Bowl quarterbacks to illustrate how new analytics technologies make it possible to quickly assess the positive, negative and neutral sentiments shared by fans.

Why is this sentiment analysis important to IBM? In addition to being a longtime partner of the NFL, IBM recognizes that its clients, just like football players, are closely connected to their brand presence.

Using advances in analytics companies, academics, journalists can gain new insights into consumer perceptions via social media on endless topics from football and baseball to movies and retailing. Technologies can even distinguish irony and figure out which tweets are just background noise and those that are truly important.

Branding Upset on the Digital Playing Field

The Super Bowl analysis shows us that today the two quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Eli Manning are in statistical dead heat:  Brady earning 65% positive sentiment and Eli Manning earning 62% positive sentiment.  That actually represents a big branding upset on the digital playing field. Most sports and marketing followers would assume that Brady should be far ahead given his lofty status as an elite QB for many years and three championship rings.

Other noteworthy findings show that wide receivers have upstaged the quarterbacks, who are being positioned in the news media as the chief protagonists — Wes Welker is #1 in positive sentiment and Victor Cruz is a close 2nd.  Interestingly Brady leads by 3% points, exactly the point spread Las Vegas oddsmakers have favored the Patriots.

So while it looks like Tom Brady is going into the game as the Social MVP, now is not the time to get cocky.  Eli Manning is holding his own against the more experienced Brady in terms of positive sentiment.

The IBM USC analysis illustrates the potential insight and benefits that social media analytics can deliver to a brand — whether you’re an professional football player or a global enterprise.  Businesses that ignore the impact of social media will be stuck on the sidelines.

Learn more about IBM and USC AIL social media analysis projects.

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