Attend hands-on Tableau training taught by the author of the first book on Tableau, Stephen McDaniel. Please join us in Seattle this September, New York or Washington, DC this October, or London or Dallas, TX this November. Register early and save $100-$300 (US course locations).
Our London training seminar is being offered in conjunction with marketingQED, Ltd of London. marketingQED has previously hosted seminars with Stephen Few and offers tools, training and support services for the marketing industry.
Both the introductory and advanced Tableau courses are based on Stephen’s new book, “Rapid Graphs with Tableau Software: Create Intuitive, Actionable Insights in Just 15 Days“. The Tableau Certification exam, which is issued by Tableau Software, is available at the conclusion of the advanced class. The courses also integrate the principles of communicating with graphs, visual data exploration and dashboard design from Stephen Few’s books. Click here for locations, dates, course highlights and more.
Economic Indicators and S&P Composite Returns from 1901-2008 A Dashboard to Explore Past, Present and Future Results by Year
When creating a dashboard, two critical questions to ask include, “what are the right metrics” and “what collection of graphs will optimize exploration and understanding from a complex relationship between multiple metrics”? This example uses historic economic and stock market data to explore these concepts and to provide powerful insights into stock market patterns relative to economic conditions. This interactive dashboard is powered by tableau public, a new service of Tableau Software. One means of interacting with this dashboard is data point brushing, highlight data in a part of the dashboard by single-clicking and dragging your mouse across data points of interest.
” Selecting the right metrics can be difficult but is a vital step to improve insight. Frequently, tradition dictates which metrics people are accustomed to receiving for a particular subject. However, these metrics could leave out vital pieces of information making the standard metrics potentially misleading. For example, many stock market discussions ignore or minimize the impact of inflation on historic returns. To understand the stock market over extended time periods, inflation can severely skew interpretation as inflation has varied widely over the past 100 years in the US.
I recently pondered the value of a great analyst to a mid-sized public company (revenues around $1-2 billion.) Based on my experience at multiple companies, I estimate the productivity, typical project benefits, and costs of an average, good and great analyst. The differences in the return to a company are staggering with great analysts yielding double the ROI of a good analyst and triple the ROI of an average analyst!
My conservative estimates of analyst project results (annual value to the firm) are $460k for average analysts, $1.2m for good analysts and $3.1m for great analysts!
There are two primary drivers behind the much higher value produced by great analysts (illustrated in the following graph):
Thanks for all of your kind comments and wonderful feedback! I will try to get back to as many of you as the last few weeks of writing the book allows!
Executive Summary
Which “green” activities are consumers performing in their everyday lives? Activities that-
• Save them money?
• Are easy to do?
• Are the most beneficial to the environment?
• Some combination of the three?
By combining insights from a recent survey of consumer behavior with expert opinion on green activities I found that:
• Activities that experts rank as the most beneficial for the environment are not always performed frequently by consumers.
• Economic benefit to the consumer is a stronger predictor of frequently-performed activities than environmental benefit.
• However, convenience to the consumer is the best predictor of green behavior!
Decision-makers for sustainability programs can tailor this method to their particular location by:
• Compiling a list of green activities specific to their region.
• Surveying local consumers and experts.
• Altering which dimensions are included in assessing the importance of various green activities.
“Newcomer” communities can maximize the impact of launching their green programs by:
• Prioritizing activities that are convenient and economical for the consumer.
• Motivating consumers with educational programs and incentives.
• Waiting until the environmental program has gotten off the ground before encouraging activities that are low in convenience and economic benefit- unless they can be financially subsidized.
After reading several articles, I decided to add my help for wayward singles seeking the right city to call home. Following in the footsteps of work in the New York Times and Sperling’s BestPlaces, I seek to create a visually intuitive presentation about the “best” place to be single. In particular, I seek to find the best cities based on concentration of singles and offer insights about cities with better odds for women and men- with some surprising results!
I hope this is a fun topic for everyone and a useful reference for some!
I love exploring the possible intersections of technology and information, with the intent to improve or expedite knowledge sharing.
One of my recent epiphanies was related to the difficulty of efficiently reviewing resumes, especially technical resumes. Recruiters and managers spend huge amounts of time reviewing resumes (at least they used too) and automated tools have attempted to “mine” resumes to simplify the review process.
Effectively Communicating Survey Data: Beyond Text Tables and Pie Charts
A review of an article from Investor’s Business Daily and recommended improvements is covered in this presentation. The topic of the article is “Obama Terrorism Grade”, a summary of a survey conducted in early April, 2009 by Technometrica Market Intelligence.
The Results are summarized three ways in the article:
- Overall for all respondents
- By political party
- By ideology
Two presentation methods are used:
- Pie chart
- Two text tables
Weaknesses of the chosen presentation method are covered and recommended improvements are shown.
In my many visits to a wide array of companies, I have noticed a common theme amongst fellow programmers, analysts, and statisticians. After years of lengthy study and practice to become expert at their area, they often express frustration and consternation for those who are less focused on the effective and proper use of data in decision-making. Your potential customers in the various areas of the business often appear to make decisions with minimal use of analysis or even data points, sometimes appearing to ignore or misunderstand your work available to them. Many of these “gut” people in the business are managers, entrepreneurs, or MBA’s. They are frequently much more willing to take on the risk of using a very simple analysis to make big decisions. This doesn’t mean they like it that way, they are often forced to face the fact that time is money and lack of prompt action can be very costly versus staying the current course. This is where you can come in with just a few more skills and really become a star…
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