IBM opens its Watson Analytics platform to the public

[HEXUS]

The freemium cloud-based data analysis service enters public beta.

Read more.

[Tpyo]

It may be nothing to do with my job, but I fully intent to have a play around and see what sor to useful information Watson can shake free from my dataset.

[scaryjim]

... see what sor to useful information Watson can shake free from my dataset.

If you don't have an analytical mind and the right data to start with, probably nothing useful. That's my big worry about this: it's only going to produce anything worthwhile if you a) have the right data to start with, and b) ask it the right questions. it's going to be far to easy to misuse. In fact, using it properly will almost certainly take one of those data scientist that the article implies will be out of a job now this is available My experience of management (and the type of creative and marketing people who are likely to jump on this) is that they're the worst possible people to be using a powerful analytical tool.... *sigh*

[Ambersuccubus]

Asking the wrong questions is a real issue, and tends to be why management don't trust analysts in the first place - they ask vague and unfocused questions based on what they *think* the data will say, and aren't happy to be told exactly what the data does say. They also seem to need to add a layer of "story", which is often just an array of justifications for previous bad decisions, and *love* visualizations of (often non-explanatory) data that are actually only clearly understandable as mathematical functions...this type of "pretty" tool is likely to make these trends worse...