McKinsey analysts recently asked how traditional industries are now using machine learning to gather fresh business insights. With processing power so cheap, chewing through petabytes of data in order for machine learning to happen is no longer an activity restricted to science boffins or the cash-rich. No surprise then that the McKinsey list documents impressive examples in America. "This past spring, contenders for the US National Basketball Association championship relied on the analytics of Second Spectrum, a California machine-learning start-up. By digitizing the past few seasons' games, it has created predictive models that allow a coach to distinguish between, as CEO Rajiv Maheswaran puts it, "a bad shooter who takes good shots and a good shooter who takes bad shots"--and to adjust his decisions accordingly".