Analytics
Description / Outline
Data is often thought of as the resource of the future. The enormous amount of data that is currently available leads to new scientific and economic questions, such as: "How can companies extract useful information from the available data to support their business processes,“ or "How can analysis of the available data improve medical diagnostics?“ The field of research that concerns itself with such questions is called '"Analytics" and can be divided into the following areas:
- Descriptive Analytics ("What is the current state?")
- Predictive Analytics ("What developments are most likely?")
- Prescriptive Analytics ("What should we do?")
At present "Analytics" combined with buzzwords like "Big Data", "Internet of Things" or "Smart Data" is a widely discussed topic in the scientific world as well as in business. However, most of the discussions focus just on the first two of the above mentioned subfields: How can we gather this data? How can we recognize its essential characteristics? How will it evolve in the future? Yet the underrepresented third subject is the one with the biggest potential: How can we use this data to assist us in decision making and how can we choose among different alternatives in order to optimize processes or even identify completely new business segments or develop new business models. In other words, what better ways are there to make use of data in mathematical optimization? In our working group we address exactly this question. The following projects provide further insight into our work on this topic.