Analytics Team

The NY Times has a great visualization of Netflix dvd rental data that shows the top 10 dvd rentals for the zip codes in 12 major metro areas. Make sure to mouse over the map to see the top 10 list for your specific zip code.

Part of BMW Oracle’s upper hand in the most recent America’s Cup may have come from the use of data mining. The boat and all its sensors can generate 2,500 data points 10 times per second. Check out this article from the Oracle Data Mining and Analytics blog to read the rest.

Slashdot says the next performance goal for the supercomputing world is exascale.

While my personal game system preference is XBOX360, it appears that the Department of Defense prefers Playstation 3. As this Boing Boing article explains, the DOD recently ordered 2,200 PS3s to add capacity to their PS3 based supercomputer.

Here’s a cool visual Ebay made to show where all their sales came from on Black Friday.

The FIrst Coffee blog reports that SAS and Netezza have expanded their partnership to allow for SAS model code to run in parallel on Netezza’s TwinFin appliance.

Lots of tech companies are known for the interesting interview questions they ask new job candidates. This is definitely one of the questions that could be posed. CNet UK estimates the combined weight of all the pcs, servers, smartphones, and other hardware that make up the internet. It’s a big number.

And another post on interview test… This article proposes that the best interview test is to simply watch someone cross the street.

If you’ve got a data set and are trying to find a curve that best represents the data, then Curve Expert might be just the thing for you. It is shareware and is currently available for Windows. Check it out at: http://curveexpert.webhop.net/

IBM has acquired SPSS and more recently acquired business analytics firm Red Pill. Now they are announcing an internal analytics product called Blue Insight, the largest private cloud computing business analytics environment in the world. Check out the Techcrunch article.

It is helpful to get other peoples’ perspectives about what sort of customer metrics can be beneficial to track and Kevin Hillstrom has put together a pretty good list. Check it out.