In the late '90s, I had a colleague who was fond of saying, "When an operations analyst encounters a problem, he opens a spreadsheet. Now he has two problems..." Indeed. If you are responsible for a project that has a spreadsheet as a deliverable, go and suspend it now. Yes, now. Go on. When you return I'll explain why you had to do it. Done? OK, I'll continue. First, let … [Read more...]

Decision Mechanics, in partnership with Prism Decision Systems, recently developed "Budget Playground"—a school district budget planning iPad app. The app was created as part of a program funded by Cornell University's New York State Center for Rural Schools. Budget Playground allows school district planning staff to forecast budgets up to ten years into the future and interactively modify … [Read more...]

Andrew Tait presented at the International Executive Seminar in Political Management and Governance hosted by George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. The theme of the conference was "governing in turbulent times". Andrew's talk covered stakeholder management (including Confrontation Analysis) and the development of political strategy. The conference … [Read more...]

Districts where residents have the highest average educational achievement tend to be the smaller ones. Staying true to the tradition of blogging, we're stating this without having conducted any research whatsoever. Still, we're confident in the assertion. Oh, and did we mention that districts where residents have the lowest average educational achievement tend to be the smaller ones. Yep. … [Read more...]

Big data is big news. Companies like Amazon, Google and major supermarkets are delivering new services and competitive advantage through analysing their massive datasets. The Economist reports that 30% of Amazon's sales are through its "you may also like" recommendations. Organizations everywhere want to make similar use of their own data. Articles and conferences on "predictive … [Read more...]

With the 2010 (football/soccer) World Cup well underway, it's only a matter of time before some teams will have to face the heartbreak of leaving the competition due to a missed penalty. In the "knockout" stages of a football competition each match must produce a winner. If the teams have scored equal number of goals (after additional playing time), the game will be decided on "penalties". A … [Read more...]

Science News published a great article on the use and abuse of statistics this week. "Odds Are, It's Wrong", by Tom Siegfried, highlights some of the problems associated with testing hypotheses using statistical methods. These problems are well known within the statistics community, with "hundreds" of papers having been written on the subject. As Siegfried pithily observes, "if you believe what … [Read more...]

With industry panels claiming that unless companies have an iPhone app they "don't exist" it's hardly surprising that senior managers are asking the question, "Does my organization need an iPhone app?" Information is increasingly accessed via smartphones. That's in no doubt. But does this mean that you need to rush out and build a smartphone version of your corporate … [Read more...]