When asked for white papers or case studies on how predictive analytics works, I often give a few stories on how different industries use analytics to find patterns in their data and then apply that knowledge to their existing data to predict what future trends are going to happen. Learn about how we applied predictive analytics to politics.
I get asked specifically about legends that roam the retail world: the study that found that milk is the most purchased item so it is always in the back of the store, making you walk by everything thing else they have before you get there, the fact that women’s shoes are always on the way to men’s clothes, and the fact that bananas are at the front of stores because they are found to be an impulse buy. The one that seems to get the most requests though is the one that men who buy diapers for their kids are most likely to have beer also in their carts.
It doesn’t seem that far-fetched. (more…)
