Summary: Which is the most critical element in data exploration, statistics or data visualization? The answer is a little like the lyric'love and marriage, you can't have one without the other'. It can be tempting to skip the data visualization but it's frequently the key to making sure we aren't heading down the completely wrong path. How much trouble can you get into with statistics? That old catch phrase has been applied to our broader society for a long time but even a data scientist can run afoul of this maxim. I admit, when talking about data visualization, I'm usually thinking about telling the story of the data and the analysis to my non-data scientist clients.

Intelligent machines are becoming a ubiquitous and essential part of business operations. Algorithms trained by faster, smarter data now play a key role in determining customer demand, increasing customer trust and delivering unprecedented productivity and intelligence to the enterprise. But despite the success of some early adopters, most machine learning projects fail. Regardless of their size, location or industry, businesses have been struggling to fully unlock and realize the value of their information. In fact, a recent Information Value Index from PwC and Iron Mountain found that 57 percent of businesses are unable to extract significant value from their data; 23 percent are unable to derive any real value at all.

Cloud computing is now being embraced by a majority of enterprises of all sizes. Yesterday's debate about public vs. private has transformed into the reality of hybrid cloud: a recent survey shows that 74% of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy. Meanwhile, 94% of enterprises are using some form of XaaS - software, platform, and infrastructure as a service. Cloud Expo is the single show where delegates and technology vendors can meet to experience and discuss the entire world of the cloud. Learn what is going on, contribute to the discussions, and ensure that your enterprise is as "Cloud-Ready" as it can be!

Amazon's workforce has exploded in recent years, more than doubling since the end of 2014, when it employed 154,000 people. As of the latest count, there were 306,000 employees working worldwide for the Seattle tech giant. But another group is growing just as quickly as the company's human workforce: the number of robots working alongside people in Amazon fulfillment centers. The company said this week that it has 45,000 "robotic units" operating in 20 distribution centers working with people to fill and ship customer orders. The number is up 50 percent from the 30,000 bots that Amazon reported across 13 fulfillment centers in the third quarter of 2015.

Tech companies flocked to the Las Vegas Convention Center as the 50th Consumer Electronics Show--a quaint descriptor in the era of self-driving cars, big data and cloud-based storage systems, as the New York Times pointed out--kicked off Thursday morning. However, techies across the globe unable to foot the bill, let alone make it to Sin City for the couple dozen free conferences, can tune in to the CES 2017 live stream for free. Although many see CES as a "schmoozefest" and a giant publicity stunt for the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Samsung and Google, the conference offers plenty of reasons for the world's tech-obsessed to take a look. Versions of Amazon's popular artificial intelligence-equipped speaker and home helper, the Echo, are likely to be ubiquitous. BBC's preview of the event pointed to a demo by the French startup Bixi that allows tablet and smartphone users to control their devices from a short distance by making hand gestures.

If you feel overwhelmed by an ever-growing social circle, fear not. Your brain can keep up with all those new faces, thanks to one region that continues to grow even in adulthood. The discovery is surprising, because most changes to the brain as it matures involve the altering of existing connections between neurons. But brain scans have revealed that one area of the cortex, the fusiform gyrus, gets much larger as we age. The fusiform gyrus is thought to play a role in recognising faces, something that adults are better at doing than children.

BMW Group, Intel, and computer-vision maker Mobileye today announced they will collaborate to create a fleet of about 40 autonomous BMW vehicles that will hit U.S. and European roads by the second half of 2017. The pilot project is aimed at demonstrating advances the three companies have made in technology that enables fully self-driving vehicles. The BMW 7 Series will be used as the initial platform for Intel processor and Mobileye computer vision technology during the global trials. Mobileye, an Israeli technology company, is a leader in developing both software and proprietary computer chip technology (EyeQ) to support vision-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) that provide warnings for collision prevention and mitigation. Mobileye has also partnered with other automakers and multi-billion-dollar tier 1 auto parts maker Delphi to supply its technology to the industry.

Inc. surprised some with one of its next-gen commerce announcements. Amazon Go, which promises to eliminate the checkout altogether, generated headlines in mainstream media and prompted some to contemplate the potential demise of retail as we know it. Lost in all this hype is the fact that the brick-and-mortar apocalypse is no more likely today than it was before Amazon's recent endeavor. Of course, Amazon, which is the world's largest internet retailer, has set the standard for commerce reinvention with fast delivery, near-invisible payments and other perks tied to its Amazon Prime membership platform . Amazon has outpaced the rapid growth of digital commerce in the retail industry globally, increasing its own market share from 12% in 2011 to 19% in 2016, according to the latest data from Euromonitor International.

With the increased attention on fraud and cybersecurity, companies are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to strengthen fraud mitigation efforts to predict the trustworthiness or riskiness of an online transaction. In an effort to achieve the same, iovation, a provider of device-based solutions for authentication and fraud prevention, launched the iovationScore machine learning fraud prevention solution. Michael Thelander, Product Marketing Manager, iovation in an interview with Techseen discussed this new solution and the advent of machine learning in fraud detection. Thelander: iovationScore is less about "fraud detection" than it is a tool for "real-time predictive analysis." One of its uses is to provide immediate insight into how risky a device is, from the very first moment that device appears on your digital doorstep.

With Qubit's machine learning engine, you get actionable insights - helping you prioritize customer segments and initiatives for the biggest impact Customer data is one of the biggest and most complex data sets companies ever have to handle. This is because of the volume of customer interactions companies gather, across hundreds of different data points - behavioral, quantitative and qualitative - all streaming in at speed. This scale and complexity can also make it one of the most difficult data sets to put to work.