What do Predictive Analytics Consultants Do? Part 2

Last week ago I posted an article called, What Do Predictive Analytics Consultants Do? Part 1, describing the general types of activities that we engage in. In the present article, I want to talk about the skills and tools that one should have to perform Predictive Analytics. Although this is not strictly a "What we do" article, knowing the skills we possess and the tools we use will provide some insight into what we do, without talking about some algorithm that you may have never heard of. I am always at a loss in describing the skills of analytics, for there are many. I just completed a new book about analytics (available for FREE--see notes) that has a different approach than Predictive Analytics using R (also available for FREE), though I am using material from three chapters.