Freakalytics Timeline

Since 2007, we have traveled 365,000 miles to help tens of thousands of people via

8 books,
24 conference talks,
47 public trainings,
26 on-site trainings,
5 conference seminars,
15 analytic advisory engagements
and 36 consulting projects.

Click here to download a summary of our accomplishments since 2007.
 
 
 
 

Free Webinar
Better Dashboards in Tableau 8

June 14th, 9 AM Pacific,
Noon Eastern, 5 PM London
Attend this complimentary webinar for ideas and inspiration to design informative, dynamic and captivating dashboard experiences with Tableau 8.
 
 
 
 

Free Webinar
Visual Analytics Best Practices
Why Can’t You See My Point?!?

June 26th, 8 AM Pacific,
11 AM Eastern, 4 PM London
Why do visual analytics best practices matter? Why can’t people see your point when you present data-oriented presentations?
 
 
 
 

Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8
now on Amazon

+ Written by recent Tableau insider & product manager, teaching Tableau to thousands since 2009
+ Real-world examples that you can follow include tips and tricks to save you time
+ High-def videos
+ The fourth edition–proven & trusted
 
 
 
 

Joyful or informative charts?
Best practices in visual analytics

Stephen Few, noted visual analytics expert and a source of inspiration for Stephen, recently wrote about criticisms of best data visualizations practices. In particular, Amanda Cox of the New York Times said, “There’s a strand of the data viz world that argues that everything could be a bar chart. That’s possibly true but also possibly a world without joy.”
 
 
 
 

Tableau Tips: Nested sorting
not as expected-a simple fix

Many students have been confused about the Tableau data sort behavior.  A common question is how to sort the data at a lower level correctly within each higher level of data in a view.  One student recently came to us with this view and asked, “What’s up? I thought it would sort each state independently within each Product Type! In the first group, Herbal Tea, Nevada is clearly number one yet it is shown in the fourth position.”
 
 
Our last bit of news, Stephen recently left Tableau.  He is happy to say that he is now our Principal Data Scientist at Freakalytics, where we offer the only independent source of strategic analytic advice and Tableau training. We can give you clear, open advice on how to maximize and integrate Tableau in today’s complex analytic environments.

Freakalytics
This newsletter is brought to you by the leading independent Tableau training source, Freakalytics.  We offer training focused on solving real-world problems with your data, Tableau and other relevant analytic tools and technologies.  Please contact us if we can be of service with on-site training at Info@Freakalytics.com

Best regards,
Eileen McDaniel, PhD and Stephen McDaniel
Freakalytics, LLC

The post Freakalytics Newsletter for June 2013 appeared first on Freakalytics.

You can have brilliant ideas,
but if you can’t get them across,
your ideas won’t get you anywhere.

-Lee Iacocca

June 26, 2013, 8 AM Pacific, 11 AM Eastern, 4 PM London

Why do visual analytics best practices matter?

Why can’t people see your point when you present data-oriented presentations?

Whether you are using big data, small data or summarized data that has been prepared for you, this webinar will explore these vital questions. If you are concerned with getting the most from your data, this complimentary webinar is a great step in learning how to clearly communicate with people as they make better informed decisions in the hectic world of modern business.

Synopsis
Are you clearly communicating the message that you want to deliver from your data? If you’re tired of your tables and charts being “good enough”, learn some tips and tricks to help make them great! We’ll demonstrate how choosing the right table, chart and metrics to answer the question at hand and how to simplify your visuals for maximum impact. Regardless of whether you use Excel, SAS, R, PowerPoint, Qlikview, Tableau, Business Objects, Cognos, Microstrategy or most any other analytics tool for your analysis, you will benefit from this thought-provoking presentation.

Click here for the full post and to register below

If time permits, a brief question and answer session will follow.

Your attendance is complimentary thanks to sponsorship by The Accidental Analyst. Attendees with a US shipping address can optionally order a discounted copy of The Accidental Analyst with your ticket (shipping inclusive). It will ship the week after the webinar.

Can your data displays help your audience answer their questions? Try it with these questions and the chart below.
+ How is our company (Vivace) doing?
- Are we number 2 or 3?
+ Are we close to number 1?
- How much do we need to grow to be number 1?
+ Worried about the two smallest competitors?

The post Free Webinar–Visual Analytics Best Practices
Why Can’t You See My Point?!? appeared first on Freakalytics.

A recent review on Amazon commented about our change in the Tableau 8 book to using grayscale images versus the prior versions using color images.  This post summarizes our thoughts on grayscale versus color usage in charts and graphs as well as the rationale for changing the book.

Thanks for taking the time to review our book. Also, thanks for highlighting the high quality and thoroughness of the content — we are passionate about helping people analyze their data, which motivated Stephen to approach Tableau in 2008 about writing the first book on the software.

While the past few versions were indeed in color, many people asked if we could lower the list price for the launch of the 8.0 edition. We also are surprised at the high price of printing in color, especially a time-sensitive book like this one about Tableau (the software updates every 14-18 months and most publishers take 4-6 months -AFTER- the author finishes to get the books to market). Unlike most publishers (large or small), our books sold in the U.S. are printed in the U.S., so we can publish relatively quickly after release.

We invested additional time adjusting the illustrations to grayscale, and as a result, drove the release price down from $47 for the 7 book to $29 for the 8 book, a savings of $18/copy or ~ 38%.  Of course, the 7 book has a lower list price now (which is normal for prior release software books), and on top of that, the exact price that Amazon selects is beyond our control.

We’ve discovered that creating charts in grayscale forces us to work carefully on reducing them to only the elements necessary to convey the information, which is a best practice in the field of visual analytics. To quote Maureen Stone, an internationally recognized expert on the effective use of color for information visualization and someone who has worked on Tableau as a color expert since Tableau 1.0, as she wrote on Stephen Few’s website:

The importance of value contrast is why a primary rule in many forms of design is “get it right in black and white.” In an ideal design, all important information would be legible even if chroma were reduced to zero everywhere in the presentation, leaving only shades of gray.

Regarding “The Accidental Analyst”, executives at Tableau were impressed and excited by the unique approach, well-organized content and friendly writing style in the early drafts of the book, which we had shared with them. They had no issues with the choice of greyscale since they sponsored a pre-publication run of the book, giving a copy to every attendee of the Tableau Customer Conference in October 2011.

Finally, we also appreciate color! If color is critical, please visit our web site, Freakalytics.com to watch the 8 companion training videos about Better Analytics with Tableau 8 and check out our many examples on the Gallery page.  Also, examine the Samples that are included on the home screen of Tableau 8. Stephen created or worked on every one of them in conjunction with Chris Stolte, Christian Chabot, Jock MacKinlay and other colleagues at Tableau.

As the only independent Tableau training source, we want to help as many people as possible learn how to effectively analyze their data.  We hope you now better understand our choices.  Thanks for allowing us to help you become a better analyst with Tableau!

The post Grayscale versus Color—Visual Analytics Best Practices
and Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 appeared first on Freakalytics.

June 14, 2013, 9 AM Pacific, Noon Eastern, 5 PM London

In this complimentary webinar, Stephen will walk you through the steps to build one of the advanced dashboards that ships in Tableau 8. Stephen will be using the World Nuclear Power Plants example that he designed while Director of Analytics at Tableau. Stephen was inspired to create this example based on the work of Peter Aldhous at The New Scientist.

Click here for the rest of this post including webinar slides, video and example workbooks

This webinar is an advanced review of features useful to people already familiar with the basics of dashboard development in Tableau. If you are new to dashboard development in Tableau, you can attend for ideas of what is possible with dashboards in Tableau 8. A sample workbook link will be provided for attendees to follow along and experiment with some of the features demonstrated during this webinar.
 
 
The webinar workbooks
Download the attendee workbooks here (a .zip file,
download it and extract the two packaged workbooks)
 
 
The webinar video

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When Stephen was Director of Analytics at Tableau, he created this version of the webinar dashboard. It ships with Tableau 8 Desktop and Server.

The webinar is past. Watch the recording, download the workbooks and view the slides above.

The post Free Webinar–Better Dashboards in Tableau 8
Video and Slides Now Available appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]> http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/06/11/webinar-db-201306/feed/ 0 http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/26/data-rapid-graphs-8-book/ http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/26/data-rapid-graphs-8-book/#comments Sun, 26 May 2013 20:53:12 +0000 Stephen McDaniel /?p=7674 If you are interested in buying the book, please follow this link. There are three sample datasets used in the Tableau 8 book that are free for anyone to use, but you must be a registered user of our site to access these downloads. Registration connects us with you so we can keep in touch [...]

The post Exercises and videos for Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]> If you are interested in buying the book, please follow this link.

There are three sample datasets used in the Tableau 8 book that are free for anyone to use, but you must be a registered user of our site to access these downloads. Registration connects us with you so we can keep in touch with you with course schedules, book updates and other topics of interest. You may unsubscribe from the e-mail list at any time by visiting our home page and clicking on the unsubscribe link. Please note that we will never share this registration information with another company.
 
 

Please click each link to individually download it.

1. The Winery customers and sales dataset
(note that this is an Excel 2007 file, if you have Excel 2003, you may need to open it in Excel and save it in the older Excel format)

2. S and P Ratings
(a comma-delimited file, commonly referred to as a CSV file)

3. Country GDP per Person Euro
(a zipped file that should be saved and extracted to open a Microsoft Access database
if you are uncertain, select “Save File” when downloading this,
go to the location where you saved it and right-click the file, select “Extract All” and
then navigate to the extracted location)

4. Starting point cheese factory dashboard
(a zipped file that should be saved and extracted to open directly in Tableau 8
if you are uncertain, select “Save File” when downloading this,
go to the location where you saved it and right-click the file, select “Extract All” and
then navigate to the extracted location)

Also, don’t forget to watch the companion videos for the book, Better Analytics with Tableau 8!

Part 1 of Better Analytics in Tableau 8 (Video and Solutions)
      + Multi-item color encoding
      + Multi-item data labels
      + Creating sets in Tableau 8
      + Union, intersection and partial sets; using sets in calculated fields

Part 2 of Better Analytics in Tableau 8 (Video and Solutions)
      + Treemaps and packed bubble charts
      + Automatically selecting the right data for your analysis
      + Forecasting for smarter planning
      + Google Analytics on the desktop—fast, beautiful and blend it with your data

The dashboard video will be posted by June 10th. Thanks for your patience on this last bit!

We hope you have enjoyed the book, samples, videos and solutions. Please keep us in mind for customized, on-site training. We authored and taught the original Tableau training program as the founding Tableau Education Partner, way back in 2009. We have trained thousands around the world including at every major Tableau conference since 2009, the only partner to have taught original Tableau training at their conferences to date. Our training is not offered by Tableau or any other partner, it is exclusive to Freakalytics and is built around the analytic thought process with Tableau as the tool of choice.

All the best,
Stephen McDaniel
Eileen McDaniel, PhD

The post Exercises and videos for Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]> http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/26/data-rapid-graphs-8-book/feed/ 0 http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/17/webinar-tooday-what-can-visual-analytics-big-data-do-for-you-3-pm-eastern/ http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/17/webinar-tooday-what-can-visual-analytics-big-data-do-for-you-3-pm-eastern/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 15:40:03 +0000 Stephen McDaniel /?p=7598 What can visual analytics & big data do for you? In this 45 minute webinar, Stephen McDaniel will review visual analytic examples and demonstrate what big data analytics can do for you. Stephen will demonstrate this using Tableau 8. Visual analytics- how is it different than traditional analytics? Review several examples and how they empower [...]

The post Webinar–What can visual analytics & big data do for you? appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]> What can visual analytics & big data do for you?

In this 45 minute webinar, Stephen McDaniel will review visual analytic examples and demonstrate what big data analytics can do for you. Stephen will demonstrate this using Tableau 8.

Visual analytics- how is it different than traditional analytics?
Review several examples and how they empower decision-makers quickly and clearly
Build new analytic content from scratch in a matter of minutes

If time permits, a brief question and answer session will follow.

Registration is now closed.

The post Webinar–What can visual analytics & big data do for you? appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]> http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/17/webinar-tooday-what-can-visual-analytics-big-data-do-for-you-3-pm-eastern/feed/ 0 http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/14/new-comment-on-sas-versus-r-for-business-analysts/ http://www.freakalytics.com/2013/05/14/new-comment-on-sas-versus-r-for-business-analysts/#comments Wed, 15 May 2013 03:09:22 +0000 Stephen McDaniel /?p=7563 Over on R4Stats, I replied to Bob Muenchen’s article, Forecast Update: Will 2014 be the Beginning of the End for SAS and SPSS? Personally, I think SAS is a wonderful application, with my SAS experience starting in SAS programming back in 1989 (mainframes, along with Fortran), SAS Enterprise Guide (I wrote SAS for Dummies, the [...]

The post SAS versus R for business analysts appeared first on Freakalytics.

]]>

Over on R4Stats, I replied to Bob Muenchen’s article, Forecast Update: Will 2014 be the Beginning of the End for SAS and SPSS?

Personally, I think SAS is a wonderful application, with my SAS experience starting in SAS programming back in 1989 (mainframes, along with Fortran), SAS Enterprise Guide (I wrote SAS for Dummies, the first two editions with Chris Hemedinger) and SAS Enterprise Miner.  Additionally, I have used JMP, SAS Data Integration Studio, SAS Forecast Studio and several other SAS tools.

On the other hand, I have used R since 2004 on several projects and S (precursor to R) since the 90′s in biopharm. I find R truer to being a modern programming language while SAS is truer to being an analyst programming language. Perhaps I am biased? But, the way I think of attacking problems with data and my typical need to massage the data in a wide range of ways, SAS is simply superior in my opinion. The flow of the language, the ease of readability and the powerful DATA step are still my favorite programming world. However, if I am seeking most any statistical test under the sun, R is clearly superior.

Unfortunately, R doesn’t have a clear, de-facto GUI (graphical user interface) that is well-designed and intuitive for business analysts. There are many GUI’s, but they are not clean and optimized around the analytic workflow, like SAS Enterprise Guide or JMP. When you frequently analyze data in relatively short periods of time, like in the business world, I simply find R impractical. For example, some of my data mining projects with SAS Enterprise Miner or JMP could be completed in a few days. Key parts of data mining, data science and statistical analysis involve collapsing the data, scanning it in multiple ways, performing complex aggregates with business rules and munging multiple data items.  Part of this speed was due to the ability to stage the data in SAS Enterprise Guide and to write SAS DATA step code as needed.

So, while R is free, for business analysts, it is free like a puppy is free. The cost is in the time to learn it and use it.  If you are  object-oriented programmer (or would like to be) and want to learn Python and R, they can be quite powerful. Most business analysts I know simply don’t have the inclination to learn these languages in-depth.

Here’s my original comments on Bob’s nice review of the growth of various statistical tools:While R-Studio looks like a beautiful IDE, it isn’t a GUI application for business analysts who won’t/can’t invest in learning R as a language.

By GUI, they mean something like SAS Enterprise Guide or Rattle. Most business analysts I know have never learned an object-oriented language, they might pick up bits of Visual Basic and the most popular language they learn is SQL.

R-Studio, IDE

SAS EG, modern GUI

Rattle, old-school GUI

The post SAS versus R for business analysts appeared first on Freakalytics.

This discussion reminds me of a similar problem in marketing and web analytics. Generating traffic that leads to sales is good. Eventually, someone finds a way to generate traffic that leads to not many new sales, but management is misled to think this must be good since traffic leads to sales. This is similar to “look, this chart is beautiful“, but hard to interpret or understand. So, while we delivered fun graphs, minimal information is shared. This may be good for traffic, but not so much for higher sales.

I suspect that part of this recent criticism can be traced back to Stephen’s recent criticism of Tableau, “Tableau Veers from the Path“. In it, he mentions a new graph type in Tableau, packed bubble charts and contrasts them with bar charts. This is an example of the “avoidance of all things circular”. Is Stephen truly anti-joy? Will an example show him to be wrong? Let’s give it a try and you can judge for yourself.

Here’s a packed bubble chart example that examines the average inflation-adjusted interest rates of European countries from 2000-2010. Countries are colored by status within the European Union. Can you easily answer the following questions? I think these are all good questions that you might expect to be asked if you presented this chart at a management meeting about this metric.

Using the packed bubble chart
1) Which country has the highest real interest rate?
2) Which country has the lowest?
- What is the approximate value?
3) What is the range of real interest rates?
4) Are the best and worst countries part of the EU or Independent?

Using the bar chart
1) Which country has the highest real interest rate?
2) Which country has the lowest?
- What is the approximate value?
3) What is the range of real interest rates?
4) Are the best and worst countries part of the EU or Independent?

As you can see, the “joyless” bar chart is much easier to read. You can see which ones have higher rates, easily examine rank and also quickly perform relative comparisons. Additionally, you can understand that some of these countries had a negative real interest rate, quite surprising to me and not at all obvious in the packed bubble chart! Personally, I take great joy in helping people understanding the data, so I don’t understand why bar charts are joyless.

However, as an analyst, statistician and data miner at many companies, I can tell you what isn’t joyful- standing in front of a group of executives and conveying incorrect answers because they misread your “joyful chart”. How about showing a chart in a meeting and saying “as you can plainly see” when no one can see it. Having this problem across several meetings will eventually marginalize your work as an analyst since you are making points they can’t see! Most business analysts work hard to earn credibility and trust through quality analysis, clear explanations and well-reasoned recommendations. Why stack the deck against them with misguided visual analytics advice?

You can read Stephen’s original article here.

Freakalytics
This is brought to you by the leading independent Tableau training source, Freakalytics.  We offer training focused on solving real-world problems with your data, Tableau and other relevant analytic tools and technologies.  Please contact us if we can be of service with on-site training at Info@Freakalytics.com

Freakalytics has trained thousands in public and on-site classes around the world, including founding and authoring Tableau’s training program back in 2009, writing the first Tableau book (now in the 4^th edition), teaching at multiple Tableau world and European conferences and direct leadership roles at Tableau with the founders, guiding the future of Tableau Desktop.  We are also the authors of The Accidental Analyst, SAS for Dummies, The Rapid Dashboard Reference Card and have been on the faculty of The American Marketing Association and The Data Warehouse Institute.

The post Joyful or informative charts? Best practices in visual analytics appeared first on Freakalytics.

Solution

I replied that Tableau was sorting State overall across every product type once for the entire table and then displaying this sort order for every Product Type.  She said this is “stupid, how can I fix it! I wasted hours trying to fix it already.”

Login to see the solution including a solution workbook! If you haven’t joined Freakalytics yet, it’s free and easy.  Just click signup.

1)      I showed her this view to prove what it was doing.  Remove Product Type from the Rows shelf.  See, it’s the same sort order as your view!

2)      In the Data pane, <CTRL+Click> on Product Type and State, then <Right click> and select Combine Fields.  A new data item appears, Product Type & State (Combined).

3)      Add Product Type & State (Combined) to the Rows shelf after Product Type.  Add State after Product Type & State (Combined).

4)      Click Product Type & State (Combined) on the Rows shelf, select Sort on the drop-down and Sort like this. Click OK.

5)      You should now see a beautiful sight, Tableau is finally sorting the data within each level! Download the solution workbook here (it’s a compressed folder containing the packaged workbook).

Freakalytics
This is brought to you by the leading independent Tableau training source, Freakalytics.  We offer training focused on solving real-world problems with your data, Tableau and other relevant analytic tools and technologies.  Please contact us if we can be of service with on-site training at Info@Freakalytics.com

Freakalytics has trained thousands in public and on-site classes around the world, including founding and authoring Tableau’s training program back in 2009, writing the first Tableau book (now in the 4^th edition), teaching at multiple Tableau world and European conferences and direct leadership roles at Tableau with the founders, guiding the future of Tableau Desktop.  We are also the authors of The Accidental Analyst, SAS for Dummies, The Rapid Dashboard Reference Card and have been on the faculty of The American Marketing Association and The Data Warehouse Institute.

The post Tableau Tips: Nested sorting not as expected- a simple fix appeared first on Freakalytics.

Click for the detailed timeline of Freakalytics activities

8 books,
24 conference talks,
47 public trainings,
26 on-site trainings,
5 conference seminars,
15 analytic advisory engagements
and 36 consulting projects.

Click to review our detailed timeline or download a summary here.

The post Freakalytics Timeline since 2007 appeared first on Freakalytics.