From Optimization to Prescriptive Analytics

Summary: True prescriptive analytics requires the use of real optimization techniques that very few applications actually use. Here's a refresher on optimization with examples of where and how they're best used. Predictive analytics and optimization have gone hand in hand since the very beginning. But in 2014 some erudite journal decided we needed another phrase for this combo and it became Prescriptive Analytics, theoretically differentiating what could happen (predictive) from what should happen (prescriptive) through the application of optimization. Originally I felt strongly that this was a distinction without a difference and only served to confuse our customers who were having a hard enough time five years ago understanding why they should even be doing predictive.