Cartoon: Coming To A Keynote Near You

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Data Visualization? Bling It On!

[I shouldn't have to say this, but... warning, SATIRE ahead:] This timely post looks at how big data is leading to a big surge in flashy data visualization, as the staid world of business bar charts finally embraces its inner “bling.” Visualization Best Practice: Apple Shows The Way “Some people say skeuomorphic design elements like 3D shadows, imaginary glass highlights, and superfluous animation have no place in modern data visualizations”... [Read More...]

Innovative Analytics in Asia and ANZ

I am delighted to be going on an “Analytics Innovation” tour of Asia and Australia/New Zealand starting next week, talking about the latest and greatest business intelligence and analytics news. If you’re in interested in analytics, and you’re in Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, or Auckland, then come join us! I hope to see you there… Part 1: Asia Rapid shifts in consumer behavior and proliferation of new... [Read More...]

Christmas Tree Analytics

According to research firm IBISWorld, Americans will spend around $3.4 billion buying over 25M Christmas trees this year, and you can see how those numbers break down in this Business Insider article. Last year, one large international retailer used SAP BusinessObjects Explorer analytics to look at trends in Christmas tree data. The overall trend looked something like this: But when the company dug down deeper, the company realized that they were... [Read More...]

What is Big Data?

This is. (More serious answer after). What does Big Data mean? (1) The current use of the term big data took off because it was used to refer to new technologies like Hadoop and MapReduce (2) Most definitions refer to the data characteristics outlined by analyst Doug Laney in 2001: the 3Vs: extremes of volume, velocity, or variety (other Vs sometimes evoked include Validity or Veracity for data quality, and the importance of business Value). Wikipedia’s... [Read More...]

Concrete Examples of How Health Intelligence Saves Lives

An excellent article in Health Data Management by Greg Gillespie gives some wonderful examples of the power of analytics to improve health outcomes, looking at data from some of the 2,000+ clinical trials that Cleveland Clinic is currently running. I strongly encourage you to read the original article (also available in pdf format), but here are summaries of the three use cases highlighted: hand-washing analytics, central-line analytics, and blood-transfusion... [Read More...]

Relying on Data Can Lead to the Wrong Decisions Says CFO.com

I just read a new CFO Magazine article called “That New Big Data Magic”, which contains the following opening paragraphs: Back in the 1980s, American Airlines (AA) was partnered with British Airways (BA), and AA’s marketing head wanted to know how many of the airline’s gold card members, its most profitable customers, were flying BA rather than AA. Larry Tieman, then a managing director in IT at AA, dove into the massive amounts of data AA... [Read More...]

SAP HANA: Why Wait?

An updated “real real-time” computing video about SAP HANA (High-Performance Analytic Appliance). What are you waiting for? (Oh — maybe more details about what it actually is?! Coming soon…) Share and Enjoy  Read More →

Where Idiots Get Their Data: Other Idiots (Don’t Let it Happen in Your Company)

The video below is an entertaining look at where global warming myths come from, by science journalist Peter Hadfield. At the risk of spoiling the video, the short answer is “idiots who don’t understand numbers”. Here’s an example from the video, where somebody claims in a blog post that global temperatures have been dropping, using this straight-line “analysis”: As the video makes clear, to work out what’s really happening to the... [Read More...]