[rm999]

Good article. The author is completely correct that people often underestimate the fragility of predictive models, and that summary analysis (I group this into a more general concept called "insights") are simpler and more robust. I think the article is a little harsh towards predictive models though.

The primary difference between a model and an insight is that insights require a human to process - anything more automatic is a model. Insights are easy to implement and are great for finding patterns and anomalies (the human mind is basically designed to pick these out). But the human element makes insights less scalable with significantly higher latency. For some problems these are unacceptable tradeoffs, and this has little to do with how stable a company's environment is. It's purely a product/strategy question, and about understanding all the tradeoffs.

[LiweiZ]

Great to know model/insight difference. You have drawn a clearer line for me, which I always struggled to think it through, even I was quite aware that they are quite different.