The Spies and Analysts™ structure is a metaphor that refers to two components of the modeling process. The spy component refers to determining what information is necessary to solve a problem and acquiring the information. The analyst component refers to taking the available information, determining which information is helpful, and using it to create a model which can solve the problem..

You can learn more about the Spies and Analysts™ structure in this blog post and see examples of it in context this series of posts. This includes how Target can tell when you’re pregnant, how United Airlines uses it to kick people off a plane, how Amazon uses it to recommend products to you, and how US News and World Reports uses it to make their college rankings.