The Benefits of Watson Analytics - or How I Improved my Golf Game

OK, so I've been going on about Watson Watson, or alternatively Watson Artificial Intelligence.  I haven't talked deeply on the use of Watson Analytics.

Watson Analytics (WA) is new to the product portfolio, but is poised to be the most important in my humble opinion.  You'll see why here in a moment, but a quick rundown first.

WA is three products in one, and makes sense of event the biggest problems where data is available, but analysis is difficult.  WA is incredible at helping to understand your business problem through data, find predictors of future events, and then tell a story around these findings.

I play golf.       A.  Lot.  Of.  Golf.     Every weekend I can be found banging balls at my golf club, complete with dreams of winning tournaments.  But alas, I never win.  Typically I come in at the bottom of the golf flight.  Sometimes I come out of the gate pretty hot, but I always find a way to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

Ben Hogan said "the key to golf is in the dirt", ie, hitting lots and lots of golf balls.  Because I have taken this adage to heart, I have kept my scores along with my statistics for a while, and being the data geek that I am, turned to WA to see what it told me.  This picture tells the story, straight from WA:

Watson Analytics analysis of my golf game

What WA helped me determine, was that I needed to work on getting my driver in the fairway more, and to reduce the number of putts.  This seems obvious to the casual observer, but it help me to identify and focus myself on the correct practice routine. I took the answers WA gave me, set up a practice regimen to focus on improving my driver accuracy and putting effectiveness.  Am I ready for the PGA tour now?  No, but lets have a look at my latest tournament scores.  You might have to squint, but you can see the tournament ranking in red in the picture below:

Thinking of ways to apply Watson technologies

So Watson isn't just the computer that competed on Jeopardy! I've come to realize.  I have conversations all the time where I am getting flushed with excitement over the use of Watson and what it can do.  I guess you can say that I'm looking at the world through Watson colored lenses.  I find myself looking at problems where it's obvious that applying Watson technologies can provide for a better outcome.

I live here in San Angelo, in the desert of West Texas, a community of about 100,000.  What's interesting about this area is that there is more barren land than population.  Although the density of people is outnumbered by livestock, communities of people dot the thousands of square miles out here in the edge of the desert.

How does Watson fit in?  The other day I was doing some research on this area concerning water (a very important topic here in the desert, especially when they report when you might run out of it and it's before your next birthday) and I realized there are multiple municipalities, agencies, departments, communities, citizens, authorities.....you get the idea...talking about weather and water.  I thought to myself, if you collate all of the unstructured (paragraph type data) data that was contained on websites, in city council meeting transcripts, and in blog posts on various forums, guess what you'd have?  A 360 degree view of all of the information, conversations, and most importantly DATA around this lifesaving topic.  Q and A type search each on what can be done to help, understand or find solutions. What Google did for searching websites Watson can do for searching ideas.

I have thoughts like these every day how the world can be changed with this technology.  It's kind of like when you see something you can't "unsee" it. 

My first recipe with Chef Watson

OK, so I got a bit zealous...and tried to be smart with Chef Watson.  I wanted to create cookie, and it had to use cornmeal and bacon.  Here is what Chef Watson gave me:

Actual recipe courtesy of Chef Watson

Now, I asked ICE Director of Culinary Development James Briscione point blank: "Can you tell me what recipes didn't work from Chef Watson?"  He replied that they all "worked", just chefs have to use their better judgement of the quantities and the inclusion of ingredients.  That answer reminds me of the disclaimer software vendors give you before you see potential products that hold them harmless if what they show you doesn't work out.

OK, so I make the Cornmeal Cookie from the recipe above.  Guess how it turned out?  If you read the ingredients in the picture above, I think you can figure it out.

What did I learn from World of Watson? 10 things

OK, World of Watson was super cool.  I learned a ton of things I didn't know.  Here's a list (not in order of coolness):

1.  Chef Watson is zany, but has some delicious creations.  Who is Chef Watson?  Take 10,000 recipes and analyze the ingredients and match the ingredients by their chemical and taste profiles and voila!  new recipes designed my a computer.  Ever has a corn flour cookie?  Me neither,  but guess what?  It was delicious!

2.  We are in the 3rd era of computing.  The first was tabulation of data.  The second was the automation of processes.  The third and current era of computing is "cognitive", that is thinking.  Machines that do what we humans don't do well.

3.  IBM has invested $1billion with a capital B into cognitive technologies.

4.  I ate a chocolate burrito with beef and fava beans.  Sorry if that sounds gross, but in fact it wasn't.  (I was really surprised).

5.  The decision making in the future will be made by cognitive systems such as Watson

6.  The goal of AI is not to create the Terminator, far from it.  The goal of AI is to complement what we humans do well with support of deep computing technologies.  

7.  $31 billion in personal wealth is being advised by "robo-advisers"

8.  Based on what we post on social media, they can extract our personality insights by the the words we use.

9.  I asked the "Chef" behind Chef Watson what recipes didn't work when the computer spit them out (pun intended).  He said none...since chefs can modify the ingredient amounts.  Check it out here:  https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/

10.  Ever watched a TED talk?  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. Who knew?  Anyway IBM scanned all of the ted talks (thousands of hours) and now has a nifty little search engine where you can ask Watson things like "Whats the relationship between money and happiness?" and it brings back the relevant video clip(s) that answer the question.  In like 3 seconds. check it out:   http://watson.ted.com/

The journey begins

Yours truly with a replica of the original Watson that
competed on Jeopardy!

Life with IBM Watson

As you may recall, back in 2011, IBM's Watson computer competed on Jeopardy! and kicked the snot out of Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the two highest money winners in Jeopardy! history.

Fast forward 4 years and the super computer we know as Watson has matured, and can do more than just win at Jeopardy!

I was introduced to Watson at IBM's first World of Watson in Brooklyn New York's Navy Yard at the Duggal Greenhouse.  This warehouse sized greenhouse, only accessible to us via water taxi (IBM execs arrived by black sedan), at the 36th street pier hosted each and every offering IBM now has for its Watson group.  Why was I there?  I was there to present on one of Watson's come lately offerings, Watson Analytics.  Being sort of a early adopter in all things IBM analytics, I proved to have made some cool insights from some data sets the IBM wanted to showcase, and with a free trip to NYC, who was I to argue?

Little did I know that by attending this conference would I experience some life-changing technology.  Sure, the dancing robot that did the Macarena was super cool, but the fact that a super computer was doing so much to improve our world, I instantly became hooked on everything that is Watson.

This is my first blog entry, and I hope it sets the stage for the adventure I'm on in using Watson for as many things as I can to improve my life.  I mean, who doesn't think its really cool to integrate some technology where none was before?  Cutting edge can be fun, can't it?