Thomas, Glenn

Leveraging the statistical problem to solve the business problem: A case study from Watercare.

Harmonic Analytics, Auckland

Oftentimes, the motivation for a statistical problem stems from a business problem. However the statistical problem of modelling the data is often much more interesting. As a data scientist, the challenge is to bring the results back around to deliver business value. In this session, I give some examples of bridging the gap in the context of understanding wastewater overflows and smart meter data for Watercare, the water supplier for Auckland. Some questions that the data scientist faces are:

• What data and analyses should I be using?
• How do I manage expectations of the business?
• How do I communicate the findings so that they will have an impact on the business?

We discuss these and more, and some of the challenges and learnings of thinking statistically in a business environment.