geospatial
A missed opportunity for Geospatial
I have a Corvette that I like to work on for fun and relaxation. It gives me an excuse to learn something new and an opportunity to hone my troubleshooting skills. It can be a fun way to spend a few hours on a weekend.
A few weekends ago I was looking for a few parts for a small project. This was spur of the moment and really didn’t need to be done now (as the car will be stored soon for the winter). I found the parts I needed from a single company, but then something strange happened.
This website had my address, knew the two parts that I wanted, but failed to make the process easy and almost lost a sale. I needed to manually check five different store locations to see if they had both parts. In this case two of the five did. One store was about 5 miles from my house and the other about 20 miles away.
Just think how helpful it would have been for this website to use the data available (i.e., inventory and locations) and present me with the two options or better yet default me to the closest store and note the other store as an option. Using spatial features this would be extremely easy to implement. It’s the equivalent to the “Easy Button” that one office supply uses in their commercials.
Now, take this example one step further. The website makes things quick and easy, leaving me with a very pleasant shopping experience. It could then recommend related items (it did, but by that time I had wasted more time than necessary and was questioning whether or not I should start that project that day). The website could have also created a simple package offer to try to increase my shopping cart value.
All simple things that would generate more money through increased sales and larger sales. It would seem that this would be very easy to justify from both a business and technical perspective, assuming the company is even aware of this issue.
I frequently tell my team that, “People buy easy.” Help them understand what they need to accomplish their goals, price it fairly, demonstrate the value, and they make the rest of the sales process easy to complete. This makes happy customers and leads to referrals. It just makes good business sense to do this.
So, while geospatial technology might not be the solution to all problems, this is a specific use case where it would. The power of computing systems and applications today is that there is so much that can be done so fast, often for reasonably low investment costs in technology. But the first step getting there is to ask yourself, “How could we be making this process easier for our customers?”
A little extra effort and insight can have a huge payoff.
Spurious Correlations – What they are and Why they Matter
In an earlier post, I mentioned that one of the big benefits of geospatial technology is its ability to show connections between complex and often disparate data sets. As you work with Big Data, you tend to see the value of these multi-layered and often multi-dimensional perspectives of a trend or event. While that can lead to incredible results, it can also lead to spurious data correlations.
First, let me state that I am not a Data Scientist or Statistician, and there are definitely people far more expert on this topic than myself. But, if you are like the majority of companies out there experimenting with geospatial and big data, it is likely that your company doesn’t have these experts on staff. So, a little awareness, understanding, and caution can go a long way in this scenario.
Before we dig into that more, let’s think about what your goal is:
- Do you want to be able to identify and understand a particular trend – reinforcing actions and/or behavior? –OR–
- Do you want to understand what triggers a specific event – initiating a specific behavior?
Both are important, but they are both different. My focus has been identifying trends so that you can leverage or exploit them for commercial gain. While that may sound a bit ominous, it is really what business is all about.
A popular saying goes, “Correlation does not imply causation.” A common example is that you may see many fire trucks for a large fire. There is a correlation, but it does not imply that fire trucks cause fires. Now, extending this analogy, let’s assume that the probability of a fire starting in a multi-tenant building in a major city is relatively high. Since it is a big city, it is likely that most of those apartments or condos have WiFi hotspots. A spurious correlation would be to imply that WiFi hotspots cause fires.
As you can see, there is definitely the potential to misunderstand the results of correlated data. A more logical analysis would lead you to see the relationships between the type of building (multi-tenant residential housing) and technology (WiFi) or income (middle-class or higher). Taking the next step to understand the findings, rather than accepting them at face value, is very important.
Once you have what looks to be an interesting correlation, there are many fun and interesting things you can do to validate, refine, or refute your hypothesis. It is likely that even without high-caliber data experts and specialists, you will be able to identify correlations and trends that can provide you and your company with a competitive advantage. Don’t let the potential complexity become an excuse for not getting started. As you can see, gaining insight and creating value with a little effort and simple analysis is possible.
What’s so special about Spatial?
Two years ago, I was assigned some of the product management responsibilities and product marketing work for a new version of a database product we were releasing. To me, this was the trifecta of bad fortune. I didn’t mind product marketing, but I knew it took a lot of work to do well. I didn’t feel that product management was a real challenge (I was so wrong here), and even though we saw more demand for products supporting Esri’s ArcGIS, I wasn’t interested in working with maps.
I was so wrong in so many ways. I didn’t realize real product management was as much work as product marketing. And I learned that geospatial was far more than just maps. It was quite an eye-opening experience for me – one that also turned out to be very valuable.
First, let me start by saying that I now greatly appreciate Cartography. I never realized how complex mapmaking is and how there is just as much art as science (a lot like programming). Maps can be so much more than just simple drawings.
I had a great teacher when it came to geospatial – Tyler Mitchell (@spatialguru). He showed me the power of overlaying tabular business data with common spatial data (addresses, zip / postal codes, coordinates) and presenting the “conglomeration of data” in layers that made things easier to understand. I believe that “people buy easy,” which makes this a good thing in my book.
The more I thought about this technology – simple points, lines, and areas combined with powerful functions, the more I began to think about other uses. I realized that you could use it to correlate very different data sets and graphically show relationships that would otherwise be extremely difficult to make.
For example, think about having access to population data, demographic data, business and housing data, crime data, health/disease data, etc. Now, consider a simple, easy-to-use graphical dashboard that overlaps as many data sets as needed. Within seconds, you see very specific clusters of geographically correlated data, which may bring attention to other correlations.
Some data may only be granular to a zip code or city, but others will allow you to identify patterns in specific streets and neighborhoods. Just think of how something so simple can help you make decisions that are so much better. It’s interesting how few businesses take advantage of this cost-effective technology.
If that wasn’t enough, just think about location-aware applications and the proliferation of smart devices and IoT that completely lend themselves to many helpful and lucrative mobile applications. Even more than that, they make those devices more helpful and user-friendly. Just think about how easy it is to find the nearest Indian restaurant when the thought of curry for lunch hits you. And these things are just the tip of the iceberg.
What a lucky day for me when I was assigned this work that I did not want. Little did I know that it would change my thoughts about many things. That’s just the way things work out sometimes.
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 