You’re listening to this podcast, so you’re, obviously, well-attuned to the cutting edge of all things digital. But, in this episode, we’re going to discuss a couple (or countless) products/platforms (PaaS — Platforms as a Service! Who knew that was a thing?!) from a little upstart company based in California. Google wouldn’t actually return our calls (okay…we didn’t call them), so we went with an Even Better Option: Mark Edmondson — Data Insight Developer at IIH Nordic, Google Developer Expert, author of so many R packages he had to write a package just to count them, delightfully accented Brit who now calls Denmark home, and a guy who tried to solve Twitter political discussions through text mining (not kidding — it’s discussed in this episode) — joined the gang to do their First Ever three-continent simulcast. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Do you have a spare shingle lying around? Have you been thinking about painting, "Analyst for Hire - Will Work for Cookies" on it and hanging it up on your front door? It seems like a lot of analysts are pondering whether the next company they should work for should be their own. Adam Ribaudo did just that (figuratively -- we have no evidence of an actual painted shingle) 2.5 years ago. He now works for Noise to Signal, a company he joined...just as soon as he founded it! On this episode, we grill Adam about how he keeps his vast workforce in line, as well as what his thoughts are about the decisions made by Noise to Signal's upper management. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Have you learned R yet? No? Well, then Tim is disappointed in you. Or, maybe that's totally okay! Way back on episode #035, we asked the question if data science was the future of digital analytics. We concluded...maybe...for some. On this episode, we dive deeper into what the career options are for digital analysts with longtime digital analytics industry recruiting and staffing maven Corry Prohens, founder and CEO of IQ Workforce. The good news? There are lots of options (if you find your passion and follow it)! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Let's pretend your goal as an analyst is to eloquently and accurately explain reinforcement learning. Now, let's pretend that you get to try that explanation again and again, and we'll give you an electric shock every time you state something inaccurately and a cookie every time you say something right. Well, you're an analyst, so you're now wondering if this is some clever play on words about cookies. As it happened, we didn't give Matt Gershoff from Conductrics any cookies of any kind in his return to the show. Instead, we gave him a lifetime's supply of opportunities to say, "Well, no, it's not really like that," which is a special kind of nourishment for the exceptionally smart and patient! In other words, the gang walked through a range of analogies and examples about machine learning, reinforcement learning, and AI with Matt, and no electric sheep were harmed in the process.  For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Dr. Peter Fader, an expert in customer lifetime value, discusses the importance of prioritizing CLV in marketing strategies. They explore the shift towards customer centricity, choosing the right customers, and the value of customer behavior over demographics. The chapter also highlights the intersection of customer centricity and service design, the validity of CLV, and ends with interesting recommendations for listeners.

Are you biased? Either you answered, “Yes,” or you’re in denial. Or you’re an AI, in which case you should just go and start your own podcast instead of listening to this one. UNLESS your prediction algorithms told you that this would be the episode where we would finally announce the addition of a third co-host, and you need to collect that data point (and, damn, you’re good, BTW). On this episode, though, our THREE (count ‘em!) co-hosts dive into different types of biases that analysts (should) grapple with, how they spot them, and what they do to take advantage of them (or mitigate them, as appropriate).  For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

The conceit of this podcast is having real analysts hang out with each other -- enjoying each other's company and talking a little shop. But, for you, dear listener, that hanging out is occurring through your earbuds. What does it take to hang out IRL with other analysts? Guest host Moe Kiss from THE ICONIC joins the guys this week to chat about Web Analytics Wednesdays, MeasureBowling, MeasureCamp, and what it takes to get those local, in-person relationships rolling successfully. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

WHY does Tim simply not give Python its due? Isn't Python a perfectly acceptable -- possibly even better -- option when it comes to diving into programming with data? It's open source, too. Some say it's easier to learn than R. And, frankly, isn't a programming language named after a snake just inherently cooler than one named after a letter of the alphabet? The fellas tackled the topic with Ryan Praskieviecz from EY on this episode...and possibly wound up tackling it in a way that will leave Python lovers that much more ready to strangle them (as pythons are wont to do). For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

It's another one of those on-going lobby bar topics: how much of the data should be made available to whom and in what form? Should all of an organization's data be completely and freely available to everyone in the company, or is that a recipe for messy data being misinterpreted and misused? That's the topic tackled on this show, courtesy of a recommendation from Pawel Kapuscinski. As it happens, it's also Independence Day in the U.S. -- a fact with which the guys had a little fun. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.  

We can watch (sort of) what users do on our sites. That's web analytics. We can ask them how they felt about the experience. That's voice of the customer. But, can we (and should we?) actually analyze their emotional reactions? On this episode, Michael and Tim sat down with Dr. Liraz Margalit, Head of Digital Behavioral Research at Clicktale, to bend their brains a bit around that very topic. And, they left the discussion thinking differently about conversion rates, and even realizing that scroll tracking might just have a valuable application! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.