Doesn’t it frustrate you when you buy an airline ticket to go home for the holidays, only to find out that your younger brother, King of procrastination bought his plane ticket a day before your flight departed (4 months after you), and he ended up paying less?
It is this very reason that Farecast was created in 2003. They understood that because of the internet, fixed pricing was a thing of the past; but now prices are so volatile that there’s almost no way to decide when it will be cheapest. Farecast solved this problem, establishing the motto “Know When to Buy.”
So how much data needs to be mined in order to predict when fares will be cheapest? According to the interview in this video, hundreds of billions of price observations that have been gathered over more than 8 years. This data is crunched to find patterns; both short and long term. Should I buy on Monday? Should I buy in the Spring?
These data predictions are about 70-80% accurate (this is more accurate than the weatherman!). This is the case because they gather more than just historical data. They gather unstructured data on rumors, gossip, blogs, PR announcements and more to come up with more accurate predictions.
This same principle can be taken into pretty much any industry, just as big data analytics can help businesses in just about any industry.
Now that the “sacred leaf” is legal in a few states, marijuana is a very popular subject. The marijuana industry has boomed since its legalization in Colorado and Washington State in 2012. Dispensaries and grow houses have become a tourist spectacle, there are even weed tours one can take to visit differing stores and try out the products…
As the average American I hear gas and oil and automatically picture money flying out of my wallet. Assuming that this is the mindset of most of our population, it is hard to feel bad for the oil and gas companies when we hear they are losing money. The problem is that most people don’t look at both sides of the situation- the lower our gas prices become, the more employees that being laid off in the oil and gas industry…
Data breaches are even scarier today as the risk level increases with more data and devices. We all are acquainted with a Twitter, Facebook or email hack, but how much more critical would these hacks be if the data breach revolved around our personally identifiable data or financial data…
In a series of interviews within the travel industry, the authors of the study from the Society of Consumer Affairs are intent to show how Big Data can be used to increase impact and reduce friction across disciplines, both within a company and the industry. Personalization is a key tenant of Big Data; there is a plethora of information about particular consumers, transactions or destinations, the reality is one of detailed, accurate personalization…
Eric Dishman shares his personal story of how his 25 year struggle with kidney cancer was finally resolved through Big Data and personalized medicine.
Dishman’s doctors were able to treat him successfully after sequencing his complete genome. For personalized medicine, only 50,000 people on earth have had their entire genome sequenced.
“The National Human Genome Research Institute, (NHGRI) has tracked the costs associated with DNA sequencing performed at the sequencing centers funded by the Institute. This information has served as an important benchmark for assessing improvements in DNA sequencing technologies and for establishing the DNA sequencing capacity of the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program (GSP). Here, NHGRI provides an analysis of these data, which gives one view of the remarkable improvements in DNA sequencing technologies and data-production pipelines in recent years.”
The Cure for Healthcare Is Personalization
Being able to crunch massive amounts of data using real-time, in-memory computing solutions means that hospitals all over the world can start accessing and analyzing numerous sources of information, from genomes, to electronic medical records (EMR), to clinical trials – bringing them together to create personalized treatments for patients.
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