If I have one big complaint about Watson Analytics, it’s that it’s still a bit buggy — the tool to download charts as images doesn’t seem to work, for example, and I had to reload multiple pages because of server errors. I’d be pretty upset if I were using the paid version, which allows for more storage and larger files, and experienced the same issues. Adding variables to a view without starting over could be easier, too.
Last month, [company]IBM[/company] made available the beta version of its Watson Analytics data analysis service, an offering first announced in September. It’s one of IBM’s only recent forays into anything resembling consumer software, and it’s supposed to make it easy for anyone to analyze data, relying on natural language processing (thus the Watson branding) to drive the query experience.
When the servers running Watson Analytics are working, it actually delivers on that goal.
Analytic power to the people
Because I was impressed that IBM decided to a cloud service using the freemium business model — and carrying the Watson branding, no less — I wanted to see firsthand how well Watson Analytics works. So I uploaded a CSV file including data from Crunchbase on all companies categorized as “big data,” and I got to work.
Seems like a good starting point.
Choose one and get results. The little icon in…
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