The Lion’s tryst with Data
A fable that explains – Descriptive, Diagnostic, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics.
The majestic Lion King and his family used to be very happy in the jungle. He was intelligent, skilled and smart. His family never killed unnecessarily. This meant no resource wastage and no energy wastage.
Today, the jungle and the Lion King’s family have grown in size. Tigers, hyenas and foxes are coming in to the jungle. Finding prey is becoming difficult. There is also a tendency to kill and overstock if/when they find prey. This Lion King is very stressed. He has to find a way out.
The Lion King decides to consult the Raven, a bird who has recently become popular as a feathered mastermind. The Raven suggests that the Lion King hire her as his Data Scientist.
The Raven has access to a rich source of data about the jungle – the animals, their food, their habitats, their habits, the trees, the lakes, etc. She also collects all the information that the Lion King and his family can give her. Using all this data, the Raven presents the Lion King with a report summarizing where/what/when prey was found in the past year. This helps him understand the place and time that he can find prey. This is an example of Descriptive Analytics .
The Lion King then wants to know why a particular prey can be expected at a particular place and time. Knowing this would let him judge possibilities better. So the Raven presents more information explaining the reasons. This is an example of Diagnostic Analytics.
The Raven then goes ahead and uses Machine Learning techniques to forecast the probability of finding a particular prey at a particular place and time. This is an example of Predictive Analytics.
But the Lion King realizes that he needs to optimize the whole process and ensure that there is no resource wastage and no energy wastage. So the Raven identified the optimum number of family members to take part in the hunting task and the optimum number of animals to kill per day as per the prey size and event. This is an example of Optimization or Prescriptive Analytics.