I’m a big Sherlock Holmes fan. I will consume the adventures of the genius detective and Dr. John Watson in any medium I can get my hands on, whether that is the original works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the action-driven Robert Downey Jr. brand, or the modern bromance featuring the talents of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. (Side note: for an alternative Holmes adventure, try the oft-forgotten Young Sherlock Holmes from 1985).
I bring all this up because a recent episode of Masterpiece Mystery’s Sherlock featured a futuristic piece of technology that showcased several analytical capabilities I’ve recently written about. To summarize the plot, Holmes is pitted against Charles Augustus Magnussen, “the Napoleon of blackmail”, who has sensitive files on every powerful person in the world. Magnussen’s glasses feature a heads up display that pull up a person’s most devastating secrets as soon as he looks at them. Because I want for work-life segmentation skills, I immediately started thinking about the technological requirements of such a device. The glasses are performing two big data tasks in near real-time: facial recognition of the subject (mapping key features and instantly matching them to a single stored profile) and then querying a huge database of dirty secrets and displaying only the juiciest nuggets on the target individual. As I read about a Google Glass user being attacked in a bar for staring too long at strangers, I wonder how long this kind of technology will remain in the realm of fiction.
Now, the episode later revealed (spoiler alert) that the glasses are in no way remarkable and the data feed is in fact the criminal mastermind’s photographic memory. Still, the technological demands are the same, even if the servers and query tools in this case are organic. Here are some links to Aberdeen research on real-time analytics and big data:
Real-Time Data Visualization: $%&# it! Do it Live!
Real-Time Analytics: Executive and Line of Business Perspectives
Seeing the Big Picture: Visualization for Big Data
And finally, this is the perfect opportunity to preview some upcoming research that breaks the Aberdeen mold and looks at analytics from an entirely new perspective. Aberdeen’s Business Analytics survey featured the Analytical Mind Map, which is essentially a BI personality test. Over 650 BI users have mapped their minds so far and distinct personalities are beginning to emerge from the data. We’ve labeled one group the Detectives because as decision makers they are data-driven and they always perform their own analysis to create new insights.
Loads of content on the detective and other analytical personas will be launching at the end of this month. For now, ask yourself, are you a BI sleuth that can parse through data and make even the most complex decision, well, elementary?
