Skip to content

June: Best Of The Web

Here is a roundup of interesting sites, resources and articles from around the web, curated by IIA. Follow us on Twitter (@iianalytics) and LinkedIn to receive instant updates on IIA content and curated content as it becomes available.

Featured Article from Analytics Leadership Consortium Newsletter

Each month, IIA’s Analytics Leadership Consortium (ALC) publishes a newsletter featuring reviews of timely and relevant 3rd party articles. Here is one of the articles highlighted in a previous newsletter.

Prepare to Protect Your Customers’ Voices

IIA’s article summary:

As voice enabled systems grow in popularity and use, so does the potential for voice hacking. Just a few years ago hackers needed 30 minutes of a voice to replicate it, now they need 4 seconds. This “improvement” increases not only the possibility of a hack, but the potential extent of the damage. And, if this security concern is not met, the popularity and effectiveness of voice enabled technology could stall as people become concerned that they will be the next victim.

IIA recommends:

  • Given the potential for harm, consider limiting what your customers can do with their voice commands to reduce the impact of a hack. For example, a bank might enable a voice to check balances, but not transfer funds.

  • Using internal or trusted external capability see what your firm’s risk exposure is by hacking your own voice enabled systems. If you have deep concerns that your firm is very underprepared, make the exercise extremely lacking in subtly and take inspiration from a real hack where the voice of the CEO was hacked.

  • Don’t wait until you get hacked to develop a policy for how you will inform customers and regulators, make changes to your processes, etc. This is standard practice for cyber security, but keep in mind that people’s voices are part of their inherent identity so there could be an even more powerful negative response.

Featured Articles

Digital Transformation is About Talent, not Technology (Harvard Business Review)

Timely article about digital transformation applies to analytics transformation too. Features five key insights: 1.) Put people first, 2.) Focus on soft skills, 3.) Drive change from the top, 4.) Make sure you are acting on data insights and 5.) If you can't fail fast, make sure you succeed slowly.

This is why data is now more essential than ever in HR (Fast Company)

The rise of analytics in HR and the impact it has on driving organizational strategy means it’s now essential for best-in-class HR teams.

How Walmart uses AI to enable two-hour Express Delivery (VentureBeat)

This article provides a good overview of how Walmart is using analytics to enable express delivery services

10 Ways Cognitive Biases Impact Data Design Work (Nightingale on Medium)

Great insights on ten known biases that are especially relevant in data visualization. Staying alert to them can help us avoid harmful and confusing designs.

In Data Science: Details Mater (Towards Data Science on Medium)

Details matter in the presentation of data. This article provides great examples of how hierarchy, text and color impact the presentation of data.

Charting New Territory (The Economist)

This article provides some examples of how The Economist designs charts and graphs for Instagram.

The 10 Most Innovative Data Science Companies of 2020 (Fast Company)

Great overview of 10 companies applying data science in interesting and innovative ways.

Featured News and Information Sites

Venturebeat

Provides latest news on AI, Big Data, Cloud and other transformative technologies. Also includes startups and VC funding across all industries.

SmartDataCollective

Smart Data Collective is a moderated community of bloggers providing insights on Big Data, cloud computing, analytics, business intelligence and data security.

Featured Resources

Alogbeans

Features tutorials for the analytics layman in concepts like A/B testing, decision trees and random forest.

20 Minute Data Science Crash Course (Towards Data Science on Medium)

This article serves as an extensive crash-course on fundamental and instrumental data science concepts.

COVID19 Resources and Articles

Google COVID19 Site (Google)

Google has put together a great set of information on COVID19 including data and insights.

Market Mix Modeling (MMM) in times of COVID-19 (Data Science Central)

Nice discussion of how the crisis can impact marketing mix models and also what to do about it.

AI, Robots, and Ethics in the Age of COVID-19 (MIT Sloan Review)

Good article on AI, Robots and Ethics in the Age of COVID-19 including bias and privacy issues from MIT Sloan Management Review.

Sports Analytics

How Mapping Shots in The NBA Changed It Forever (FiveThirtyEight)

Interesting article on the 3-point revolution and how it is changing the NBA. includes some cool shot visualizations.

NBA Stuffer

NBA Stuffer is a great collection of articles, resources and datasets highlighting the movement to data and analytics in NBA basketball.

About IIA

IIA is the industry’s leading source of insights and advisory services for companies transitioning to data-driven decision-making and advanced analytics. IIA continuously seeks out insights, information and experts to elevate our client’s and our community’s analytics expertise through two service lines. IIA's Research and Advisory Network (RAN) provides clients with access to the world's largest analytics-focused expert network; a resource designed to accelerate analytics teams' progress against their projects and initiatives. IIA’s Analytics Leadership Consortium is a closed network of analytics executives from diverse industries who meet to share and discuss best practices, as well as discover and develop analytics innovation, all for the purpose of improving the business impact of analytics at their firms.