Working with predictive analytics in data science
Now that we’ve seen how crucial data and data analytics are to the efficient running of your business, it’s time to take a look at another part of data mining that will play a huge role in what is about growing your business. We’re going to spend some time in this chapter looking at predictive analytics so you can understand what it can do to help you be efficient and more profitable as a business.
Put simply, predictive analytics is simply the process of obtaining information to make predictions about patterns and trends in your business. With predictive analytics, you are able to predict some unknown factors, not just factors that will arise in the future, but also those in the past and present.
You will often need to make predictions about your business. You can’t always know what’s going to happen at some point in your business, no matter how hard you try. But when you use the data you have and follow some of the trends that appear there, you can easily start to notice some things that can then help you make good predictions to follow for the future.
For example, predictive analytics can be used to help you identify suspects of a crime that has already been committed. Some banks and financial institutes would use this to detect fraud as it happens.
