The Imminent Future of Predictive Modeling

Predictive modeling tools and services are undergoing an inevitable step-change which will free data scientists to focus on applications and insight, and result in more powerful and robust models than ever before. Amongst the key enabling technologies are new hugely scalable cross-validation frameworks, and meta-learning. Over the past two to three years there has been a small explosion of companies offering cloud-based Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) and Predictive Analytics as a Service (PAaaS). IBM and Microsoft both have major freemium offerings in the form of Watson Analytics and Azure Machine Learning respectively, with companies like BigML, Ayasdi, LogicalGlue and ErsatzLabs occupying the smaller end of the spectrum. These are services which allow a data owner to upload data and rapidly build predictive or descriptive models, on the cloud, with a minimum of data science expertise.