The availability of powerful statistical software and the plethora of data have greatly shortened the distance between an analyst and a predictive model. With great computing power, comes great responsibilities. Watch out for the following Three Deadly Sins in your predictive models.

1. Overfitting

A model that over-promises and severely under-delivers.

2. Type 3 Error

A model that solves the wrong problem.

3. Fooled by p-values

A model that searches for patterns and finds spurious patterns