Understanding Big Data (and not die trying) – Dr Serge Plata (Head of Analytics, Home Retail)
Abstract
There are so many terms in the analytics industry today, and no one really understands them well: Data science, data analysis (or is it analytics?), data architecture, web analytics, business intelligence, and management information; there are also many platforms from relational databases to Hadoop clusters, and programming languages like python, .NET, C# and F# (sounds like music!); not to mention all the statistical packages like (R, SPSS and STATA) and front end tools (like Pentaho, D3.js or Tableau). But what does this mean? Where do all of these elements fit in the data and analytics profession?
In this talk I will explain what they are, how they work and how they interact with each other, but most importantly how businesses use them to take advantage of all these mathematical tools and make data-driven decisions. I will give real life examples on these tools and methods like machine learning, data mining and mathematical modelling and also how platforms are used.
Dr. Plata did his doctoral research at Imperial College London before taking up a post as a research fellow at the University of Exeter. Prior to that, he did a degree and masters in mathematics, specializing firstly on differential and algebraic topology and moving then into spectral theory, homeomorphic dynamics and ergodic theory which classically fall into the applied fields like optimisation, game theory, and machine learning. Among other publications, he wrote a book under Peter Lang Publishers titled “Visions of Applied Mathematics”.
In terms of mathematical applications, Dr. Plata has extensive experience building, and developing analytics programmes as well as leading data projects and data science teams from FTSE100 companies to technology SMEs. He has worked mainly in the retail space including digital and mobile, pioneering on behaviour analytics, machine learning and big data.
He is a fellow of the IMA and he currently heads the ‘data science and advanced analytics’ team at Home Retail.
No charge is made to attend meetings; non-IMA members are welcome.
