Beyond The Realm Of Imagination

Be it healthcare, financial fraud or even our day-to-day activities – analytics has the power to find solutions to most complex issues that the future is set to throw at us

- Sarabjeet Kaur

A VERY BRIGHT LIGHT IS SHINING today through the power of analytics. Years ago, decisions based on gut feelings and intuition were replaced with decisions based on data. Tedious hand calculations were replaced with reliable algorithms which were executed by machines. Food for thought: To discover the origin of analytics, machine learning, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI), we could go back a couple of decades and still find traces of these technologies.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have amplified the conversations about the role of algorithms in all sectors. But analytics has always been a differentiator between those who use it and those who do not, or those who use it strategically and those who use it only tactically in isolation. For decades, analytics and data management have followed advances in technology and specifically advances in computing. Analytics adapted to the availability and capacity of computing. As processes are executed faster and memory capacity and storage increases, it becomes easier to solve bigger problems with more and more complex analytics and not just textbook theories.

At the SAS Global Forum 2018, Oliver Schabenberger, COO & CTO, SAS said that he is a lifelong learner. He spent 25 years of his first 30 years in classrooms to eventually find out that what he had learned had largely become irrelevant for the decades that followed. “We believe that curiosity is at the heart of human progress. We can improve lives through analytics. We believe that we can transform a world of data into a world of intelligence through analytics. We believe that we can empower and inspire youth to do great things with data. That is why we exist, that is our quest,” he added.