Data Analytics and IoT data

Recently several members of Cimetrics' technical staff completed an on-line course in data analytics. Our motivation was to extend skills, previously applied successfully to building systems, to new problem domains exposed by the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT, as it becomes more widely deployed, will be producing immense quantities of data about everyday objects and devices; its sheer volume is one of the most challending problems in realizing the potential of IoT. Data analytics is one promising tool for dealing with that volume, by identifying patterns within the data that can lead to actionable insights and decisions.

The course we took, offered by the EdX consortium, is entitled “The Analytics Edge”, and is based upon M.I.T course 15.071, developed by the Sloan School management faculty. Some of the tools we learned were regression (linear and logical); associative trees; and natural language processing (NLP).

Since taking the course we have noticed/experienced a heightened awareness of the applicability of those techniques to situations encountered every day. An example I recently encountered, in The Atlantic magazine described the use of NLP for identification and warning of telephone scams, with obvious application to protection of vulnerable targets.

We spot these opportunities for application of data analytics frequently, and they always seem to inform our work. I hope to “blog” about others in future.

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