Rexer Analytics, a data mining consulting firm, is conducting their fourth annual survey of the analytic behaviors, views and preferences of data mining professionals. This is a really interesting survey (I blogged about the results of the previous one here) and I encourage you to participate. The survey Link is www.RexerAnalytics.com/Data-Miner-Survey-2010-Intro2.html (you will need the access code KP9260).

Karl and his team say:

Your responses are completely confidential: no information you provide on the survey will be shared with anyone outside of Rexer Analytics. All reporting of the survey findings will be done in the aggregate, and no findings will be written in such a way as to identify any of the participants. This research is not being conducted for any third party, but is solely for the purpose of Rexer Analytics to disseminate the findings throughout the data mining community via publication, conference presentations, and personal contact.

You can email them directly at DataMinerSurvey@RexerAnalytics.com if you have questions or want to request previous research summaries. The survey should take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Karl Rexer just sent me this link - Oracle Data Mining on iPad - and I have to say it is pretty cute. I recently got a demo of the new Oracle Data Mining capabilities and will post a quick summary of it soon but this is new way to look at the capabilities.

Obviously there are challenges with any kind of content creation on the iPad (most folks seem to really like it for content consumption, not so much for content creation due to lack of keyboard etc) but it does illustrate the possibilities inherent with using a compute cloud like amazon.com's.

Very cool Karl.

CNet had a nice story about UPS that caught my eye - UPS turns data analysis into big savings. What was interesting about this to me was not just the use of telemetry (which is interesting enough), but the way analytics acts as a massive value multiplier for this kind of data. In the article you see this great quotes:

"There's millions and billions of pieces of information flooding out of the vehicle [at all times] into this dumb telematics device,"
"Now you have to mine it," Levis said.

Absolutely. Now you have to mine it. There is too much data, arriving too fast to put this on a dashboard or in a report and get real value from it. Instead you need to mine it for insight and operationalize this insight so it is actionable. Add the rules that make it actionable and then make the decisions, take the actions, that will add value to your business.

While not every company has telemetry data, many have high volume data streams that seem to offer the potential for better business operations. But you have to mine it.