The Data Vault: Best data articles, 7 - 13 September

Clifford Alper is a founding partner of Analysis Factory, based in Boston, Massachusetts. As the business analytics wizard of the company, he's responsible for the Analysis Factory signature look-and-feel. Under his direction, Analysis Factory has been a leader in the information design field for over 15 years, delivering industrial strength analytics solutions for everyday users.

In theory and in practice, market research and big data have been handled as separate commodities that address different sales and marketing needs. But as technology evolves, market research and big data are at a turning point that, ultimately, will lead to their convergence in a single market.

In a recent CustomerThink blog post, my colleague, Jay Houghton, discussed some guiding principles required for a big data strategy to avoid getting into trouble. In addition to a sound strategy, adopting big data solutions into an organization also requires a unique implementation approach.

With fancy terms like data scientist, self-service BI and data discovery being thrown around by industry experts, it can sometimes be hard to know how to get started with creating the interactive dashboards and BI apps that most people in your organization need.

Modern public transit systems are elaborate networks with dozens of stations and scores of trains serving thousands of passengers daily. Anyone who has ever stood on a platform waiting for the next train understands the frustration of delays. But for commuters in Stockholm, Sweden, things may be looking up.

How is big data impacting America's favorite pastime? Big data first came to fame within the baseball world with the Moneyball story - the Oakland Athletics' use of high-level data analytics to find the best players available. However, big data use in baseball is going beyond the desks of talent scouts.

The concept of using Big Data to pursue marginal gains within an organisation might seem rather underwhelming; surely the prospect of a holistic customer view, real-time offers and recommendations, rapid identification of fraudulent activity, or preventative maintenance on expensive capital assets are potential game changers and disrupters.

This story first appeared in the September issue of Entrepreneur . To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. There are 29 million people living with diabetes in the U.S.-more than 9 percent of the population-at an annual cost of $245 billion.

Currently only 13% of companies achieve full-scale implementation of their in-house big data projects, and currently only 27% of executives describe their in-house big data initiatives successful. Such a low success rate should be concerning for executives considering adopting big data technology, such as Hadoop or Spark.

The next time Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning scrambles to avoid a sack, tiny sensors embedded into his uniform will gather information about how far he sprints. The National Football League, like many big businesses, is experimenting with collecting and analyzing huge amounts of data.

Every day there are thousands of interactions between police officers and citizens across the country. While most are uneventful, a small number leave a member of the public disrespected, unprotected, harassed or - in all too many cases seen recently - hurt or even killed.

If you're still saying, "Big data isn't relevant to my company," you're missing the boat. I firmly believe that big data and its implications will affect every single business - from Fortune 500 enterprises to mom and pop companies- and change how we do business, inside and out.

Print this page Email article When was the last time you did a spring clean on your laptop? We all get frustrated when we start running out of space and can be guilty of deleting files haphazardly without looking at what data is actually causing the problem.

In Geoffrey A. Moore's seminal book Crossing the Chasm he describes a five technology adopter lifecycles of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. The "chasm" is the most difficult step of innovations transitioning between visionaries (early adopters) and pragmatists (early majority).

In the face of sliding oil prices, oil and gas companies are increasingly embracing new data tools to help cut costs and manage resources more efficiently, according to a new report. The slide in oil prices -from over $100 last year to $38 earlier this month- might be good for drivers.

In 2015, 'cloud' sounds like old news in the world of IT. By and large, cloud is now mainstream, and increasingly so. Salesforce started selling Software as a Service over the web as far back as 1999.

Shoes Sold by the Step Imagine buying the world's best shoes or for that matter any pair of shoes and paying zero dollar for them upfront. That would be crazy right? Well the Internet of Things can make this possible.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is on its way to becoming the next technological revolution. According to Gartner, revenue generated from IoT products and services will exceed $300 billion in 2020, and that probably is just the tip of the iceberg.

Big data has proven to be a useful tool for plenty of industries. And now it's making its way into another type of business - one that's not traditionally associated with high-tech tools - beer making. Jason Cohen is a data scientist from State College, Pennsylvania.

Empathy and Data Science: A Fable of Near-Success Editor's Note: While the story is fiction, the... Wise Practitioner - Predictive Analytics Interview Series: Jeff Butler at IRS Research, Analysis, and Statistics organization In anticipation of his upcoming conference presentation, The...