In our increasingly digital world, businesses are investing heavily in technology to collect vast amounts of data. Companies now have access to more information than ever before!
With all this data at their disposal, tech companies have designed software that helps them analyze the patterns in the numbers to make predictions about what will happen next.
These predictive analytics tools can help you in your job by predicting when an employee may leave their position, determining which products are selling and failing to sell, or even detecting fraud.
Businesses use these applications to improve efficiency and cut down on costs, giving those professionals a leg up on the competition.
While there are many ways organizations can apply prediction technologies in the workplace, one of the most popular uses is for employees to find their own internal role within the company.
Internal roles play a major part in professional development. By offering different opportunities and rewards, employers boost staff morale and motivate workers to keep putting in effort into the organization.
Prediction apps give individuals the chance to explore different functions of the business, learn new skills, and grow professionally.
It also gives them the opportunity to contribute to the success of the firm they work for, and earn some praise for their efforts.
But how do people get motivated to take advantage of such programs?
There must be a way to incentivize it!
This article will talk about five easy ways to incentivize personal professional growth with reward systems.
What does it mean?
In predictive analytics, computer algorithms are used to determine what factors will lead to something happening. For example, if there is already past data indicating that people with symptoms of cancer go online frequently, then we can assume that they look up information about the disease. Using this theory, you could use predictive analytics to check whether someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer goes onto Facebook or not. If they do, then we can infer that their health may be deteriorating quickly!
There are several types of predictive analytics. The one discussed in this article focuses on identifying patterns in large amounts of past data to identify risks and predict future events. This type of analysis can help prevent, treat, and cure diseases by looking at your medical records and predicting where potential problems may arise.
This technology is very specific as to field it is applied to.
Sample predictive models
One of the most fundamental components in any kind of predictive analytics is a model. A model can be categorized as either classification or regression.
A classification model predicts an outcome (like whether someone will go bankrupt) by looking at predictor variables (things like age, income, etc.)
A regression model estimates how much something costs dependent upon its predictors (price per unit based on size, for example).
The term “predictive modeling” usually implies some sort of prediction using both a regression and/or a classification model, but that isn’t always the case!
In this article we’ll take a look at one such use case where only a classification model was needed to make predictions. This type of model is called out-of-fold validation, and it works best when there are very few instances of the event being predicted.
What is out-of-fold validation?
With out-of-fold validation, you generate a bunch of different models, then evaluate each model on a test set that doesn’t include samples from the same population as the ones used to create the model. You compare the accuracy of these new models with the original model to see if they work better, or worse.
This process is repeated many times until you find a model that performs well.
Sample datasets
In this section, we will be looking at some example data sets that you can use to get familiar with predictive analytics in Oracle Database. While these are not live production databases, they do contain enough content to give you an idea of what features Oracle’s PA technology has and how to work with them.
The first set is for beginners – it contains only five tables and one stored procedure! This easy-to-understand database was designed by experienced professionals who wanted to make sure everyone could understand basic concepts quickly.
This beginner level dataset includes just three steps: prediction model creation, evaluation metrics, and model deployment. If you have ever heard of machine learning before then you already know what each of those things means!
To add more advanced functionality like feature selection or validation, simply scroll down below the “Beginners Guide” section. There you will find all the settings and tweaks needed to take your models beyond the basics.
Sample predictive queries
One of the most fundamental components in any predictive analytics model is the sample used to build your prediction. You can use either a historical or current dataset as a sample, depending on what kind of predictions you want to make.
When creating a prediction algorithm, it’s important to test how well it works on at least one data set that is similar to what it will be applied to. This way, you get an accurate representation of how well the algorithm would work on actual data!
Historical samples are datasets with past instances of observations and results, while current samples are just observations only. Predicting future events using past information is called time series forecasting, and there are many ways to do this within predictive analytics. For example, you could add previous years’ values into a regression equation, run the model, and extract predicted values.
There are also event-based models where you predict something happens given certain conditions, for instance, if and when someone calls off their wedding due to being engaged. In cases like these, we call the predictor a trigger, and the outcome a target. A common method of predicting engagement is to look at characteristics such as income, number of vacations, and savings, and see whether they indicate a possible relationship.
Another type of prediction model is causal inference, which looks at relationships between two variables to determine the cause of another.