to frame the decision, asking questions about the data and the methodology, working to understand the results, and using them to improve outcomes for… - Thomas H. Davenport

Every decade or so, the business world invents another term for how it extracts managerial and decision-making value from computerized data. In the 1970s the favored term was “decision support systems,” accurately reflecting the importance of a decision-centered approach to data analysis. In the early 80s, “executive information systems” was the preferred nomenclature, which addressed the use of these systems by senior managers. Later in that decade, emphasis shifted to the more technical-sounding “online analytical processing,” or OLAP. The 90s saw the rise of “business intelligence” as a descriptor. In the middle of 2000’s first decade, “analytics” began to come into favor, at least for the more statistical and mathematical forms of data analysis.

One other problem is that too many people — and vendors in particular — are already using big data to mean any use of analytics, or in extreme cases even reporting and conventional business intelligence.

That was one of the reasons why Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center decided to work with Watson — to make widely available the level of knowledge of the hospital’s best oncologists to the world at large.