N1005 IBM Research: Tradeoff Analytics

Watson helps cultivate improved crop yields

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/photos/2729.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/photos/2729.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Editor's note: This post is by <a href="http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view.php?person=il-BOAZC">Boaz Carmeli</a>, a researcher at <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/labs/haifa/index.shtml">IBM Research – Haifa</a> specializing in agriculture and health analytics.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Worldwide, approximately 800 million people suffer from malnutrition. That's about one in every nine people living on earth. How can we significantly affect this statistic given limited resources and an unequal distribution of farmlands and wealth around the globe?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One significant approach to reducing that number requires a major increase in yield production. Optimizing fertilization can increase yield by up to 50 percent, but it requires knowledge and resources that local farmers might not have access to. Our Fertilyzer app, one of the winners of the recent <a href="https://developer.ibm.com/watson/blog/2015/06/15/watson-gbs-challenge-winners-announced/">IBM Watson + GBS Cognitive Challenge</a>, just might hold the answer to helping farmers increase their yields dramatically.<br /><a name="more"></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">An internal IBM effort, the Challenge galvanized employees to develop Watson-powered cognitive apps using Bluemix, IBM's cloud platform for building and managing mobile applications. Our work on Fertilyzer was inspired by ongoing talks we have had with one of our agricultural services clients.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Fertilyzer was awarded “Best Mobile Experience” by Challenge judges for its intuitive interface, simple access to multiple information sources, and easy-to-understand data visualizations. But this Android app is more than just great to look at. Put together by an Israeli team of IBMers led by Roi Zahut from IBM’s <a href="http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/consulting/">Global Business Services</a>, fellow GBS employees Matan Mashiah and Yosef Ben-David, and Matan Ninio and myself from <a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/">Research</a>, Fertilyzer is a cognitive mobile app built using  <a href="http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/">Bluemix</a>. It taps into Watson technology to recommend optimized fertilization plans and track their progress. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Fertilyzer model allows farmers to consider weather conditions, soil types, and field history to generate fertilization plans and predict cost, yield, and profit. Once all the predictions and related plans of action are ready, Fertilyzer then uses IBM Watson <a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/tradeoff-analytics.html">Tradeoff Analytics</a> to help the farmer make the right decision. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal">The app also includes a dashboard that helps keep the farmer updated on agricultural news and plan progression. Fertilyzer reads through an immense range of news articles and tweets and sends relevant news and alerts to the farmer when it finds something important, like a forecasted price drop or an upcoming storm, so farmers can act on new information.</div><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/130135193" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Let's say a farmer is planning an upcoming season for a specific crop, such as a russet potato variety. Fertilyzer's connection with Watson Tradeoff Analytics can help him weigh different options, while stressing certain variables, such as profit, and filtering out others, like risk. But if news starts to trend before planting about an expected potato price crash in his region, Watson's news filter can send an alert to the farmer's Fertilyzer app, thereby allowing him to adjust crop plans before it's too late. Ultimately, more-efficiently grown crops will improve yield, providing more food to more people. In a small but substantial way, we hope Fertilyzer will help communities tackle hunger and malnutrition.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Our next steps for development are to test the tool and gather more data. We’ve built a great prediction model that takes into account a wide variety of environmental parameters, but now we need to see how it will work in the field (pun intended). We also plan to extend the tool’s news and social media services to support more languages and learn how to detect even more events.<br /><br />For more information about Fertilyzer, <a href="mailto:boazc@il.ibm.com" target="_blank">contact me</a>.</div>

Editor's note: This post is by Boaz Carmeli , a researcher at IBM Research – Haifa specializing in agriculture and health analytics. W...

IBM Watson Tradeoff Analytics takes the guesswork out of decision-making

<i>Weigh alternatives systematically with a dynamic tool that helps you make the best possible choice</i><br /><br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbnr634Bd2mPSIilxKsJ780AoKFIIkF1WrXo4uroY__pMla0Qsh4_uhyphenhyphenADTYwu8BHQY2Sel62yoDSMT1u70hC7eLh1Zm2UELMGADV2Ke5dzMR4DiY69DZKIKDnK8d7qlwwyoA1gP8BuI/s1600/AteretAnaby-Tavor_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGbnr634Bd2mPSIilxKsJ780AoKFIIkF1WrXo4uroY__pMla0Qsh4_uhyphenhyphenADTYwu8BHQY2Sel62yoDSMT1u70hC7eLh1Zm2UELMGADV2Ke5dzMR4DiY69DZKIKDnK8d7qlwwyoA1gP8BuI/s1600/AteretAnaby-Tavor_sm.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ateret Anaby-Tavor</td></tr></tbody></table><i>Editor's note: this article is by Ateret Anaby-Tavor, Manager of Decision Analytics at IBM  Watson Group in Haifa, Israel</i><br /><br />How do you decide what product or service to purchase? Some people research first; some let an advertisement or a salesperson convince them; others make a random choice. You may have sometimes felt a twinge of doubt, felt that maybe you should have given it more thought. It’s a tough job to systematically compare, weigh all the relevant pros and cons, and then confidently make the best possible choice with minimal compromises.<br /><br />My team in Haifa developed <a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/tradeoff-analytics.html" target="_blank">Watson Tradeoff Analytics</a> to help people make better, more educated decisions using formal methods. These formal methods are the techniques and tools we created to model decisions as mathematical entities, and include optimizations, graph algorithms, and computational geometry, among others. We initially developed the project inside IBM Research and it is now part of the Watson services platform -- open to developers and anyone who wants to use it inside their environment or applications.<br /><a name="more"></a><br /><br /><b>“Behind the scenes” analytics: not just another comparison tool  </b><br /><br />A tradeoff is defined as a balance, or compromise, between two desirable but incompatible features. Without a formal method of comparison, the outcome will probably be a gamble, because it’s hard to make sense of or even realize what we’re compromising on. This is especially hard since the decision is often made between multiple options. Choosing a car, house, financial product, school, or job candidate are just a few examples where there is generally no single choice that is best in every way. <br /><br />For example, anyone can go to a website and compare cellphones by choosing criteria to get a list of models. If price is the deciding factor, you could just choose the cheapest from the list of options. But it’s not that simple. Almost every decision we make involves more than one consideration. Even if the price factor is important, will you just purchase the cheapest phone? Not likely. The screen size, manufacturer, camera resolution, color, weight, battery life, and customer reviews all matter to varying degrees. <br /><br />No one wants to compromise more than they have to. The bottom line is, it’s hard to compare because each option has its own advantages - and sometimes they are at odds with each other. This is exactly where the Tradeoff Analytics tool comes in. It gives a visual and interactive representation of data so any user, not just mathematicians, can easily navigate choices to compare. The tool takes into account different objectives, and highlights the ones that you determine as most important. <br /><br />Say you use the Tradeoff Analytics tool to search for that cellphone. You can define each one of the parameters that are important to you without thinking about potential conflicts. One click translates all that information into an easy to read polygon-shaped map. Rest assured that Tradeoff Analytics already filtered out the cellphones that are inferior in all your objectives. Now, all you have to do is scan your top options on the map, then click, compare, and decide.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpRqQnsaFHVqVGxS3uL2isrtEVlXX-DDKzXNcTX5btBynwvkEf3d_dHmEWaoRAj9X0IK94U50rMS0kxS7UkwS9WqWG65bVXDKzjyK0mMSt3-GdCTKWYc2KbBkrg7OsbNm49y1u1SYYaY/s1600/tradeoff.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="553" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpRqQnsaFHVqVGxS3uL2isrtEVlXX-DDKzXNcTX5btBynwvkEf3d_dHmEWaoRAj9X0IK94U50rMS0kxS7UkwS9WqWG65bVXDKzjyK0mMSt3-GdCTKWYc2KbBkrg7OsbNm49y1u1SYYaY/s1600/tradeoff.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watson Tradeoff Analytics compares cellphone options</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Each circle represents one of your options, with the parameters you’ve defined, translated into color-coded segments. The visual clearly shows which parameters are maximized and which are minimized based on your preferences. Lets look at the “price” and “size” objectives. On the map, price is dark blue and screen size is green, and we want to minimize price while finding the device with maximum screen size. You might see that one phone is better on the size criteria but it is expensive, and this is indicated by a big green slice (and a small dark blue slice) of the associated pie.<br /><br />Another phone might fit the requirements of weight and price, but is less optimal in terms of screen size. The bigger the “slice,” the more that product answers that specific requirement, and highlights the trade-off when compared to another option. You not only get assistance on which phone to examine, the tool also offers the reasoning so you will never miss a valuable option.  <br /><br />The beta version of the tool is now available, free on <a href="https://console.ng.bluemix.net/" target="_blank">Bluemix </a>for anyone to try. See our <a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/getstarted.html" target="_blank">Getting Started</a> guide, and try the demo <a href="http://tradeoff-analytics-demo.mybluemix.net/" target="_blank">here</a>.

analytics Ateret Anaby-Tavor bluemix decision-making IBM Research - Haifa Tradeoff Analytics watson IBM Watson Tradeoff Analytics takes the guesswork out of decision-making

Weigh alternatives systematically with a dynamic tool that helps you make the best possible choice Ateret Anaby-Tavor Editor's note: thi...