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Welcome to 15.071x,
The Analytics Edge.

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In this first lecture, we'll
discuss how analytics redefines

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the meaning of intelligence,
how it can contribute

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to your personal
happiness and health.

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Data is transforming
business, social interactions,

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and the future of our society.

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The amount of electronic data
that exists in the world today

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is a phenomenal 2.7
zettabytes, which

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is equal to the storage
required for more than 200

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billion high-definition movies.

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Not only the amount of
data is extremely high,

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but it increases at
exponential rates.

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Our ability to effectively
process this data

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is also increasing very rapidly.

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As an example, decoding
the human genome

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originally took 10
years to process.

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Now it can be achieved
in just one week.

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Analytics is increasingly
important in the world today,

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and this influence is
expected to increase.

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McKinsey estimates that
there is a shortage

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of 140,000 to 190,000 people
with deep analytical skills

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to fill the demand of jobs
in the United States by 2018.

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IBM has changed its business
focus over the last 100 years

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very successfully from
typewriters to mainframes

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to personal computers
to consulting, and now

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to analytics.

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It has invested over
$20 billion since 2005

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to grow its analytics business.

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Companies will invest
more than $120 billion

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by 2015 on analytics, hardware,
software, and services.

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Analytics is becoming
increasingly critical

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in almost every industry,
from health care,

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to media, to sports, to finance,
to government, and many others.

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Let us give a
definition of analytics

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so we make it as
concrete as possible.

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We define analytics to be
the science of using data

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to build models that lead
to better decisions, that

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add value to individuals, to
companies, to institutions.

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Note that there are four
ingredients-- data, models,

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decisions, and value.

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And all four are needed
in this definition.

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What are the key
messages of this class?

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First, analytics provides
a competitive edge

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to individuals and companies.

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Analytics are often critical
to the success of a company.

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And they provide often the
decisive essential technology.

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Our teaching methodology is to
teach you analytics techniques

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through real-world
examples and real data.

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And our overarching goal is to
convince you of the analytics

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edge and inspire
you to use analytics

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in your career and your life.

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The teaching team comes
from the Operations Research

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Center at MIT and the
Sloan School of Management.

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I am Dimitris Bertsimas.

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I have received my Ph.D.
from MIT from 1985 to 1988.

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And I have been
with the MIT faculty

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at the Sloan School of
Management since 1988.

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Currently, I'm the co-director
of the Operations Research

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Center.

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My career is centered
in analytics.

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And I believe that analytics
can change the world.

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The other instructor of this
class is Allison O'Hair.

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Allison received her Ph.D. from
the Operations Research Center

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at MIT in 2013.

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Allison and I have
worked together

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in the area of health
care analytics,

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and are working at the moment
with our colleague Bill

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Pulleyblank on an
analytics textbook.

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The teaching
assistants in the class

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are Iain Dunning, Angie King,
Velibor Misic, John Silberholz,

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and Nataly Youssef, all Ph.D.
students at the Operations

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Research Center at MIT.

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To give you a sense of the
breadth of applications

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in this class, we'll
cover the story

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of IBM Watson, the computer
that beat the best human players

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in Jeopardy!, the company
eHarmony, the Framingham Heart

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Study, and D2Hawkeye,
a company that I have

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been involved for
almost a decade.

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Other examples include
the story of Moneyball,

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how analytics can help predict
the Supreme Court decisions,

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the role analytics have
played in predicting

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the outcomes of the US
presidential elections, how

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analytics can utilize
effectively data from Twitter,

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Netflix, airline revenue
management, radiation

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therapy, sports scheduling,
and many others.