Part 6 of our 18 part series on “Where is the Money”.  This article asks critical question what is slot optimization with the specific goal of driving incremental revenue. This critical question draws us to define two kinds of metrics, optimization metrics and outcome metrics. Using this approach we explore how metrics that are related to the customer experience can be used as the central driver of gaming floor optimization. In future articles we will explore how we can use mini casinos combined with optimization metrics, such as corrected utilization and corrected theoretical win, to explore revenue optimization.

Gaming Floors of the Future Part 10 of 12

For years hold has been a staple of gaming analysis, statements such as 0.1% tightening the gaming floor will result in 100k more revenue have been heard across the gaming world for years. This article sets out to mystify the use of hold in this way by showing the effect of utilization on hold and a comparative matrix.  We also tackle the issue of hold percentages in a server based world and the possible impact of the customers’ perception of a slot machine.

Hold hiding in the averages

Every slot operator knows the overall average hold % of their slot floor.  On a day-to-day basis this does a nice job of letting you know how lucky you (or your customers) were on any given day.  Unfortunately this number is often aggregated over longer time periods, and then used to discuss the “price” of your games, in this article we discuss a combination of mathematical methods and practical examples to show now this aggregation of hold often provides irrelevant and misleading data.  We will show that while hold % on a single game is a relevant component of (although not the entirety of) price, it becomes irrelevant when talking about the price of a group of games, or even the entire slot floor.

I am proud to be part of hte TDWI San Diego chapter and it was a real pleasure to do double duty. 

Big Data from the Trenches, presented on experience with technologies on the market to address “Big Data” needs.

How do you see your data.
Explore how data visualization and dash boarding tools bring information to life.

Thank you TDWI SD

It is well known that human understanding is more effective with pictures than with rows and columns of numbers. However, much of the output from business intelligence environments remains trapped in traditional reporting formats.

In this workshop, we explore best practices for deriving insight from vast amounts of data using visualization techniques. We will examine visualization for reporting with drill-downs and real-time business activity monitoring, and leverage data visualization in connection to data mining algorithms.

A key theme is exposing actionable decisions through use of visualization techniques. Examples from a variety of industries will be employed. The workshop will describe advanced visualization algorithms, including the use of organic shapes to convey high-density information, how animation of data increases data density, and an experiment demonstrating the data absorption rate of the human mind. The workshop will also cover the relationship between data warehousing and data visualization, showing how metadata can be used to leverage the power of highly detailed data to create insightful data visualizations.

You Will Learn

• How visualization can be used to overcome information overload
• Best practices in the use of visualization for BI
• Common pitfalls in the use of visualization for BI
• Next generation visualization techniques using mashups, geospatial data, and animation
• The differences in using visualization for strategic BI versus operational BI
• Critical success factors for implementation of scalable solutions

Geared To

• Business and IT leaders; managers; analysts; end users; BI application developers

http://events.tdwi.org/Events/San-Diego-World-Conference-2010/Sessions/Sunday/Overcoming-Information-Overload.aspx

Building visualization into your BI platform is often based on two principal goals: to enable insight into unusual aspects or outliers in the data, and as a communications tool that enables sharing of insight and understanding. This session covers the 10 best practices of visualization implementation that enable the achievement of these two goals. These 10 best practices include how to determine if a visualization is best suited for communication or outlier observation, the appropriate data density that should be applied, and methods of effective training in a visualization product.

http://events.tdwi.org/Events/San-Diego-BI-Executive-Summit-2010/Sessions/Monday/Ten-Best-Practices-for-Effective-Visualization.aspx