Friday, April 17, 2020
Business Intelligence and Analytics 60
1 Coronavirus’s impact on supply chain
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/operations/our-insights/supply-chain-recovery-in-coronavirus-times-plan-for-now-and-the-future
Even as the immediate toll on human health from the spread of coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the COVID-19 disease, mounts, the economic effects of the crisis—and the livelihoods at stake—are coming into sharp focus. Businesses must respond on multiple fronts at once: at the same time that they work to protect their workers’ safety, they must also safeguard their operational viability, now increasingly under strain from a historic supply-chain shock.
2 Three Scenarios to Guide Your Global Supply Chain Recovery
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/three-scenarios-to-guide-your-global-supply-chain-recovery/
On Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, technology executive Pierre Haren and I published a short article in which we predicted “that the peak of the impact of COVID-19 on global supply chains will occur in mid-March, forcing thousands of companies to throttle down or temporarily shut assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Europe.” This prediction was accurate; see, for example, the closing of automotive factories in Europe and the U.S. or luxury brands shutting down their manufacturing activities in Europe.
3 Global economy will suffer worst year since Great Depression of 1930s, IMF says
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/imf-worst-year-since-depression-1.5531430
Beaten down by the coronavirus outbreak, the world economy in 2020 will suffer its worst year since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the International Monetary Fund says in its latest forecast.
The IMF said Tuesday that it expects the global economy to shrink three per cent this year — far worse than its 0.1 per cent dip in the Great Recession year of 2009 — before rebounding in 2021 with 5.8 per cent growth. It acknowledges, though, that prospects for a rebound next year are clouded by uncertainty.
4 Alphabet soup: How will post-virus economic recovery shape up?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-economy-graphic-idUSKCN21R242
Will be it a U? A V? Maybe a W? Predictions for economic recovery after coronavirus-linked lockdowns are throwing up a medley of letters to indicate whether we can expect a bounceback, a slow-burn recovery or relapse.
Of more than 50 economists polled by Reuters, some forecast the world economy will shrink as much as 6% in 2020. The other extreme was a prediction for 0.7% growth. The average was a 1.2% contraction.
5 Everything You Need To Know About Big Data in 2020
https://datafloq.com/read/everything-you-need-to-know-about-big-data-2020/8213
You would be hearing a lot about big data. Just like its name, Big Data is the biggest thing in the marketplace. Perhaps, you just have heard that this technology is creating a number of job opportunities around the world.
While businesses are considering this technology a breakthrough, it is both a challenge and opportunity for developers & experts.
6 Rolls-Royce launches Emer2gent, an alliance to hasten economic recovery from coronavirus using data analytics
https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/16/rolls-royce-launches-emer2gent-an-alliance-to-hasten-economic-recovery-from-coronavirus-using-data-analytics/
An alliance of companies led by Rolls-Royce will work to develop new ways of supporting businesses and governments as they recover from the economic impact of COVID-19, the automaker announced this morning. Google Cloud, IBM, the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, Truata, The Data City, and ODI Leeds have pledged to join Emer2gent, which will combine traditional economic, business, travel and retail data sets with behavior and sentiment data to provide new insights into — and applications to support — the global recovery from COVID-19.
7 Connecting with customers during a crisis
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/connecting-with-customers-in-times-of-crisis
The COVID-19 global humanitarian and economic crisis has forced individuals and companies to rapidly change how they live and work. Many elements of business and life are being challenged; in some cases, the next normal may look very different as new ways of working are carried over into the future. Companies are doing their best to manage through this pandemic—from ensuring an effective crisis response, 1 to managing supply-chain disruptions, 2 to safeguarding the well-being of their employees by adjusting daily working practices. 3
8 The Insignificance of Significance Testing
https://towardsdatascience.com/the-insignificance-of-significance-testing-6f6a5a91589
And so scientists are naturally concerned with finding good criteria to judge if the results they obtained are really worth reporting. The idea of significance testing tries to establish objective measures that help to separate the wheat of science from the chaff of science.
The most popular criteria for statistical significance is probably (I’m 95 percent sure) the p-value. But as we will see, this seemingly “best” criteria can open the door to a whole new set of problems. It can make shady results look solid, can give nothing the air of significance, can hide bad research behind a deceptive sense of objectivity.
9 Unlocking Business Potential with Digital Data Optimization
https://www.informationweek.com/big-data/unlocking-business-potential-with-digital-data-optimization/a/d-id/1337445
Recent research from technology industry trade association CompTIA suggests that enterprises looking to maximize the value of their data need to implement new practices. According to the Trends in Data Management report, many organizations are currently working with a blank slate when it comes to data optimization simply because advanced data practices haven’t been positioned as a top priority.
10 Visualizing Decision Trees with Python (Scikit-learn, Graphviz, Matplotlib)
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/04/visualizing-decision-trees-python.html
Decision trees are a popular supervised learning method for a variety of reasons. Benefits of decision trees include that they can be used for both regression and classification, they don’t require feature scaling, and they are relatively easy to interpret as you can visualize decision trees. This is not only a powerful way to understand your model, but also to communicate how your model works. Consequently, it would help to know how to make a visualization based on your model.
11 Explainable AI: The key to Responsibly Adopting AI in Medicine
https://insidebigdata.com/2020/04/16/explainable-ai-the-key-to-responsibly-adopting-ai-in-medicine/
In this special guest feature, Niv Mizrahi, CTO & Co-Founder of Emedgene, discusses a field of technology that constantly is rising in importance – explainable (or interpretable) AI, and specifically how it has become a key responsibility for adopting AI in medicine. Emedgene is a genomics company using AI to automatically interpret genetic data so that health organizations can scale personalized care to wider populations. An expert in machine learning and big data, Niv has led Emedgene’s development from idea to a mature solution used by leading genomics labs.
12 How to Make Your (Now Virtual) Event Shine
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-make-your-now-virtual-event-shine/
7 Strategies for Better Virtual Conferencing
The first three strategies are about how to engage your audience. This is always the most important aspect to consider when communicating in any medium. The next four strategies involve the production of your videoconference, which may depend on the technology and resources you have at your disposal.
13 How business leaders can plan for the next normal
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/the-future-is-not-what-it-used-to-be-thoughts-on-the-shape-of-the-next-normal
Dealing with the coronavirus crisis and its aftermath could be the imperative of our times. Indeed, we have argued that it augurs the “imminent restructuring of the global economic order.” As Ian Davis, one of our previous managing partners, wrote in 2009 in the midst of the global financial crisis:
“For some organizations, near-term survival is the only agenda item. Others are peering through the fog of uncertainty, thinking about how to position themselves once the crisis has passed and things return to normal. The question is, ‘What will normal look like?’ While no one can say how long the crisis will last, what we find on the other side will not look like the normal of recent years.”
14 Business Networking Isn’t Dead – It’s Not Even in Hibernation
https://www.business2community.com/small-business/business-networking-isnt-dead-its-not-even-in-hibernation-02302296
I heard on the grapevine, OK it was someone posting on LinkedIn, that business networking is meant to be dead in the wake of COVID-19 and I was actually stunned that they thought the world had stopped networking.
As many of us rapidly find ourselves and our businesses forced to close doors, hibernate or adapt it is understandable that in the face of these kinds of restrictions be it trading or simply an inability to gather in groups of more than two, that you could be forgiven for thinking that networking as we know it is in hibernation too.
15 Dive Into Deep Learning: The Free eBook
https://www.kdnuggets.com/2020/04/dive-deep-learning-book.html
Thanks to the current realities associated with COVID-19, lots of us around the world are spending more time at home than we normally do, and some of us may have additional idle time on ours hands. For those of us looking to spend some of this idle time learning something new or reviewing something previously learned, we have been (and hope to continue) spotlighting a few select standout textbooks of interest in data science and related fields. This is the next entry in the series.
16 In the Face of a Pandemic, Can Pharma Shift Gears?
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/in-the-face-of-a-pandemic-can-pharma-shift-gears/
The COVID-19 pandemic may well prove to be the biggest challenge for humankind since World War II. Pharmaceutical companies will be key to fighting a disease that is bringing health care systems to their knees and sending shock waves through economies across the globe. They have the scientific know-how, the management capabilities, and the physical and technological capacities to develop treatments — and, ultimately, a vaccine against the virus.
17 Microsoft plans Planetary Computer to assess the Earth’s health
https://venturebeat.com/2020/04/15/microsoft-planetary-computers-environment-land-ai-for-earth/
Microsoft today announced a series of initiatives aimed at advancing the protection and preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. It said that it would support the development of a “Planetary Computer” to aggregate environmental data and would leverage AI to develop and deploy technology that helps partners and customers with sustainable decision-making. Microsoft also said that it would advocate for public policy initiatives that measure and manage ecosystems and that it’d expand its AI for Earth program to give grantees greater access to machine learning tools.
18 Ten Guidelines for Creating Opportunities in a Time of Crisis
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/ten-guidelines-create-opportunities-coronavirus-crisis/
The truth is that every crisis, while deeply unsettling, also contains the seeds of opportunity. When we face the kind of dramatic crisis we do today, we need to remember three things:
How do we cope with this crisis now? This question is uppermost in people’s minds – as it should be – and it also tends to dominate the news.
What opportunities does this crisis create?
What can be done to anticipate crises in the future and prepare for them? Even if it isn’t possible to preempt a future crisis, how can we prepare to respond rapidly and effectively?
19 Hobbled by coronavirus, China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for first time on record
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-gdp-idUSKBN21Z08Q
China’s economy contracted for the first time on record in the first quarter as the coronavirus shut down factories and shopping malls and put millions out of work.
Gross domestic product (GDP) fell 6.8% in January-March year-on-year, official data showed on Friday, a slightly larger decline than the 6.5% forecast by analysts and reversing a 6% expansion in the fourth quarter of 2019.