Probably you won’t agree that your business and poker have some similarities. Perhaps they do not at the first glance. But eventually, both come down to one thing: Making better decisions based on the data you have at hand. See how this comparison works out.
The Scenario
Usually, people will get the game mechanics rather fast. But in the long run, they will lose to pro players.
Usually, people will get the game mechanics rather fast: A beginner will know them after a short time. He may have fun playing and will win some pots. But in the long run, he will lose to pro players – unless he improves his style of playing.
Increasing the Odds
It’s simple: To succeed, you need to gather more information.
How can this be done? It’s simple: To succeed, you need to gather more information. You’ll use indirect sources such as betting patterns of your opponents that you figured out when playing with them. How much do they usually bet when they have good cards? How do they act if they have a mediocre hand? And maybe you can figure out a tell to see if an opponent is bluffing?
A successful poker player knows that the key for long-term winnings lies in maximizing the expected gain on each round of betting. You do not have to win every game, but your strategy should allow you to win in the long run. To have a competitive advantage against other players, you’ll need to increase the information available to you to make good decisions.
Good Decisions Require Good Information
The same is true for your business. Some decisions might look good just because you are missing vital information – if you had this information, you would decide differently.
If you are in marketing for example, you might ask yourself which customer has a high customer lifecycle value to put your marketing budget into? Who will help your business succeed in the long run? It’s likely that many of your costumers will not bluff, but they usually will not give you this information. If you don’t agree, just think of yourself and whether or not you are willing to spend 10 minutes filling out a survey for an online store when you just want to buy commodities.
Gain Knowledge From Data
The data is out there, ready to be analyzed. Google does is. Amazon does it. All the big ones do it.
The main issues we tackle are the following three problems:
- Store and transform data from many sources, even when very big. You can combine different sources, and some data might result in huge amounts that are difficult (or expensive) to handle by traditional database systems.
- Extract information out of the data. That’s where data mining comes in: You try to figure out patterns in data and even make predictions for new customers based on what you have seem in existing ones.
- Present the information. The best information is worth nothing if it is presented in a format that is hard to grasp. Information visualization is a key in order to make the information understandable to humans.
This is the area where we can help businesses. Our data mining technologies and support tools can provide insights into data that goes beyond simple statistical analysis. We can give you the tells in your data. So you can make the better decisions.
Latest posts by Gernot R. Bauer (see all)
- This was Cassandra Meetup in Vienna - 2014-01-20
- Announcement: First Cassandra Meetup Vienna on January 13, 2014 - 2014-01-09
- Cassandra Summit Europe 2013 - 2013-10-26