Articles & Whitepapers

Your expert resource

Consider the experienced practitioners of OpenBI as your go-to-resource for answers to the tough technical, analytical and performance questions you face in your business. Take a look at what’s happening in our industry publications.

Index
Open Source Punditry
Performance Management, Strategy and BI Design
Spotlight on R
Interviews & Book Reviews
On the Lighter Side

 

Open Source Punditry

Title	Author	Comments
Commercial Open Source BI Redux	Dave Reinke & Steve Miller	An review and update on the predictions made in our 2007 article focused on the current state of the commercial open source BI market. Also included is a brief analysis of potential options for commercial open source business models and our take on their applicability.
Open Source BI as Disruptive Technology	Dave Reinke & Steve Miller	Reprint of May 2007 DM Review article explaining how and why Commercial Open Source BI (COSBI) will disrupt the traditional proprietary market.
Business Intelligence: Open Source Alternatives	Kevin Haas	Kevin provides a detailed survey of the open source technologies which could comprise a full BI/DW technology stack.
Live ... From the World Technology Community ... It's Open Source BI!	Dave Reinke	Open Source BI technologies are ready for prime-time. Dave introduces the broad sweep of OSBI technologies in this manifesto, relating the history of Saturday Night Live for effect.
Poor Man's BI	Steve Miller	Comprehensive open source business intelligence (OSBI) platforms are becoming available. However, for those wanting a quick start, there is a minimalist architecture using PostgreSQL, Python and R to get baseline BI functionality today.

Performance Management, Strategy and BI Design

Title	Author	Comments
Performance Management: Linking Strategy with Intelligence	Steve Miller & Dave Reinke	This article explains why Performance Management (PM) should direct your BI investments. Additionally, an example is given depicting how to shape your BI requirements through the prism of PM
Strategy and BI	Steve Miller	BI is expanding from its passive reporting roots to become a more active organizational and strategic driver. This article explores the interplay between business strategy and intelligence to meet these changes.
Business Intelligence that Makes a Competitive Difference	Steve Miller & Dave Reinke	An argument is made that investments in BI make a company more competitive. However not all BI investments are equal. Operational BI and Enterprise Decision Management take center stage.
Statistical Learning for BI, Part 1	Steve Miller	First of a series that defines statistical learning and its relationship to BI. This article contrasts traditional statistics and machine learning methods for predictive modeling.
Graphics and Predictive Models for BI	Steve Miller	As predictive modeling becomes more pervasive in BI, it’s important for the craft of analytics to elevate in response. The dumbed-down straight line models available in Excel and BI platforms may ultimately do business more harm than good.
Evidence Based Management - Business Wisdom Part 1	Steve Miller	In the first of a 2-part series for BI Review, Steve introduces the concept of Evidence Based Management by exploring its origins in Evidence Based Medicine.
Evidence Based Management - Business Wisdom Part 2	Steve Miller	The second of a 2-part series for BI Review. Ever wonder what John Wooden's contribution to BI might be? Read this article to find out!
Validity, Design and BI, Part 1	Steve Miller	When is a relationship between two variables valid? What designs can be used to test the validity of relationships? This article provides a light introduction to these concepts with some fun examples. Gotta love any BI article that references Paul "Bear" Bryant!
Validity, Design and BI, Part 2	Steve Miller	The second, concluding article examining how to design BI solutions that properly identify valid cause-effect relationships. This article introduces more advanced design techniques, sharing examples to bring theory to practice.
Validity, Design and BI, Part 3	Steve Miller	The third of a 2-part series (slap) in which Steve connects understandings from Rosenzweig's newly released book, The Halo Effect, with the quality design of BI solutions.
Strategic Learning, Design and Business Intelligence	Steve Miller	Strategic learning is accomplished by articulating one's strategy as a hypothesis, then designing valid tests to prove the hypothesis while using BI as the means to measurement and performance improvement.
Prediction Markets	Steve Miller	Leveraging the wisdom inherent in crowds, prediction markets now exist for just about any topic, including the 2008 elections. This article explores their relevance to BI.
The BI Ensemble, Part 1: Weak Ties, Diversification and the Wisdom of Crowds	Steve Miller	What is a decision market and how can a corporation utilize its power to make better predictive decisions? Weak ties, diversification and the wisdom of crowds are the fundamental concepts behind this idea.
The BI Ensemble, Part 2: Bagging, Boosting and the Wisdom of Crowds	Steve Miller	What if a decentralized (weak ties) crowd (data sample) is not readily available? Create your own bootstrapped data and enhance with bagging and boosting techniques.
Musings on the ROI of BI	Steve Miller & Kevin Haas	Several ROI techniques are pondered as candidates for proving the value of an investment in BI. In the end, perhaps a new way of thinking is required? Could BI be as central to the modern enterprise as, say, an efficient ERP system?
Epidemiology and BI: Help for Designing Effective Intelligence	Steve Miller	BI analysts can learn from the methods, designs and statistical analysis techniques applied in other fields. This article catalogs techniques in the world of epidemiology and parallels them to BI.
A Propensity for BI	Steve Miller	BI practitioners should understand the strengths and weaknesses of the designs they deploy to gather intelligence. This article surveys the options in the context of propensity modeling.
The Harvard Business Review on BI for Management	Steve Miller	How can management define ROI for their BI initiatives? This article looks to Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decision articles "Evidence Based Management" and "Competing on Analytics" for insight.
Paying Homage to EDA	Steve Miller	The roots of BI extend back to the late 70’s with the formalization of best practice exploratory data analysis (EDA) methods. Steve pays tribute to this enduring framework as the foundation for modern BI.
The Harvard Business Review and BI	Steve Miller	Sometimes insight, inspiration and innovation come from seemingly odd places. In this article, Steve examines the February 2007 HBR issue relating why HBR should be on the regular reading list of all who consider themselves to be a BI leader.
Performance Measurement + Program Evaluation = Performance Evaluation	Steve Miller	Piling on to the buzzword bloat of performance management punditry, Steve (tongue in cheek) provides yet another buzz-phrase while offering some valued clarity on the topic.
Dimensional Graphics - A Slightly More Sexy Approach to Examining Multivariate Data	Steve Miller	Understanding a company's performance drivers and trends requires rapid exploration of data in comprehendible formats. Steve introduces dimensional graphics as a technique to accelerate and improve this process.

Spotlight on R

Title	Author	Comments
R You Ready for Open Source Statistics?	Steve Miller	R has become the "lingua franca" for academic statistical analysis and modeling, and is now rapidly gaining exposure in the commercial world. Steve examines the R technology and community and its relevancy to mainstream BI.
R and BI (Part 1): Data Analysis with R	Steve Miller	An introduction to R and its myriad statistical graphing techniques.
R and BI (Part 2): A Statistical Look at Detail Data	Steve Miller	The usage of R's graphical building blocks - dotplots, stripplots and xyplots - to create dashboards which require little ink yet tell a big story.
R and BI (Part 3): The Grooming of Box and Whiskers	Steve Miller	Boxplots and variants (e.g. Violin Plot) are explored as an essential graphical technique to summarize data distributions by categories and dimensions of other attributes.
R and BI (Part 4): Embellishing Graphs	Steve Miller	Lattices and logarithmic data transformations are used to illuminate data density and distribution and find patterns otherwise missed using classic charting techniques.
R and BI (Part 5): Predictive Modelling	Steve Miller	An introduction to basic predictive modelling terminology and techniques with graphical examples created using R.
R and BI (Part 6) : Re-expressing Data	Steve Miller	How do you deal with highly skewed data distributions? Standard charting techniques on this "deviant" data often fail to illuminate relationships. This article explains techniques to re-express skewed data so that it is more understandable.
The Stock Market, 2007	Steve Miller	R-based dashboards are presented to demonstrate the return performance of various asset classes during 2007.
Bootstrapping for Portfolio Returns: The Practice of Statistical Analysis	Steve Miller	Steve uses the R open source stats package and Monte Carlo simulations to examine alternative investment portfolio returns...a good example of applied statistics using R.
Statistical Graphs for Portfolio Returns	Steve Miller	Steve uses the R open source stats package to analyze market returns by asset class with some very provocative embedded trellis charts.
Frank Harrell, Iowa State and useR!2007	Steve Miller	In August, Steve attended the 2007 Internation R User conference (useR!2007). This article details his experiences, including his meeting with long-time R community expert, Frank Harrell.
An Open Source Statistical "Dashboard" for Investment Performance	Steve Miller	The newly launched Dashboard Insight web site is focused on the most useful of BI tools: dashboards. With this article discussing the use of R and trellis graphics, OpenBI brings the realm of open source to this forum.
Unsexy Graphics for Business Intelligence	Steve Miller	Utilizing Tufte's philosophy of maximizing the data to ink ratio of graphics, Steve demonstrates the value in dot plot diagramming. The R open source statistical/analytics software is showcased.

Interviews & Book Reviews

Title	Author	Comments
Analytics and Experiments for Business: An Interview with Super Crunchers Author Ian Ayres	Steve Miller	Steve interviews Ian Ayres to reveal how Super Crunching, the application of randomization and regression, can elevate the performance of business processes.
Super Crunchers - Lessons for BI Learned and Confirmed	Steve Miller	Steve reviews and recommends Ian Ayres' new book, Super Crunchers. Ayres' multi-disciplinary examination of the role of regression and randomization techniques to improve the intuition based decision making of experts is a compelling read for any BI enthusiast.
Open BI Forum Goes to Harvard	Steve Miller	The OpenBI team has had the good fortune to meet Gary King, the David Florence Professor of Government and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. This is part 1 of a Q&A regarding quantitative social sciences and BI.
Open BI Forum Goes to Harvard (Part 2)	Steve Miller	Part 2 of Steve's interview with Gary King, the David Florence Professor of Government and Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Interview with Phil Rosenzweig, Author of The Halo Effect	Steve Miller	Steve interviews Phil Rosenzweig author of The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers to understand the halo effect and how it applies to the world of management and business performance.
Chance and BI - Fooled by a Random Black Swan	Steve Miller	Nassim Nicholas Taleb's books Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan argue that much of what humans observe as patterns are really driven by random, non-linear events. Considering Taleb's theories, BI practitioners best understand how to design analyses to prove strong performance correlations.
Pfeffer & Sutton Interview: Evidence-Based Management	Steve Miller	Steve interviews Jeff Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, two esteemed thought leaders and authors, on the importance of wisdom built on constant evaluation of knowledge and the humility to doubt and change.
Statistics, Experimentation, Machine Learning, Open Source, and Business Intelligence	Steve Miller	Steve interviews John Maindonald, long time analytics guru and R champion, covering a wide variety of topics.
Smart (Enough) Systems - BI Engage	Steve Miller	Steve reviews James Taylor's new book: Smart (Enough) Systems - How to Deliver Competitive Advantage By Automating Hidden Decisions.
Open Source BI: The Venture Capital Perspective - Intel Capital Does the Math	Steve Miller	An interview with Patrick Walsh, investment manager for Intel Capital, on open source, super-crunching and their recent investment in REvolution Computing, a provider of commercial support for the R open source statistical/analytics software.
MIT For Free - A Boon for BI	Steve Miller	MIT's OpenCourseWare is a freely available collection of on-line classes some of which are must-do's for BI practitioners. Steve identifies which courses are most applicable.
Whence WEKA - Open Source Data Mining	Steve Miller	An examination of the WEKA open source data mining package introduced via an interview with Mark Hall, Ph. D., a core member of the WEKA development team.
S-PLUS 8 from Insightful	Steve Miller	This article is a review of the S-PLUS 8 statistical modeling and analysis software from Insightful that was written for the June 5, 2007 DM Direct Special Report. S-PLUS 8 is characterized with discussion relating its open source cousin, R.
A Statistical Stocking Stuffer for the Holidays	Steve Miller	Not sure what present to buy that "quant" friend of yours? Check out Steve's suggested shopping list of statistical texts.

 

On the Lighter Side

Title	Author	Comments
College Football Conferences in the NFL	Steve Miller	Which conferences were the best at placing their players into the NFL? Check out Steve's fun study and analysis in this article.
Experiments in BI	Steve Miller	A weekend of football watching and business magazine browsing turns ugly when Steve reads the story of a college admissions consultant who for $20,000 can all but guarantee she will get your child accepted at the college of their choice. Read on for Steve's provocative challenge to this claim...
Tuna Intelligence - Teenager BI in the Outer Banks	Steve Miller	Fishy Metrics? The predictability of fishing boats and other reflections on a family fishing adventure off the North Carolina Outer Banks.
Yuletide Lite Plus a Few Graphs	Steve Miller	A look back at 2006 accomplishments and forward to 2007 goals. Plus, it's Bowl season where major conferences compete to see who is best on the field. Check out Steve's analysis (light) of how they compare in the classroom.