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Time magazine recently published a map of state budget shortfalls for 2011 by state. While this was a good attempt, I thought it would be informative to show this data in Tableau to offer additional insight. The image of Time’s map is not as clear as a regular scanned image since I used my iPhone- taking the photo on a flight!
There are three primary areas for improvement
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From datadoodle,
So many people who should know better seem to miss the point when they mention Tableau. Why? I asked BI veteran Stephen McDaniel for his thoughts — which he gave, but then went on to suggest an almost unheard of challenge: a data analysis face-off among vendors
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This dashboard provides a comparison of per student spending with performance on the SAT exam based on the 2009 New Jersey Report Card data. DFGs are based on economic and demographic data. These are assigned by the New Jersey State Department of Education.
This work was created in collaboration with Bob Morrison of Quadrant Arts Education Research. Bob has extensive experience with helping school systems measure educational results related to how and where funds are spent. I have a great admiration for Bob as a passionate advocate for growing both music and arts education. Bob has expertise in advocating on behalf of students around the many ways that music and arts education can engage students and improve their academic performance. Read the rest of this entry »
A great summary of key requirements to build a data-driven culture, by Chris Stolte, Tableau co-founder:
1. Don’t fear the user,
2. Encourage corporate curiosity,
3. Manage to the outliers,
4. Measure, experiment and then measure again, and
5. Build trust and understanding.
I would add two more points, one of which Chris is too modest to state,
6. From my experience working at Netflix, no matter the level of decision-maker, ask them for the data to back up their decision and to examine the results of their decisions.
7. Deploy Tableau in your business- speed of insight is critical to the value of data in many business needs. Tableau quickly delivers beautiful insights that are understandable by all of your employees. There is no other application like it!
Read the article and see Chris’s comments first hand.
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The “Simple Business Dashboard Design Strategies” presentation can be downloaded here. I am presenting this presentation today at 4 PM Pacific on Stacey Barr’s Measure and More Webinar.
The dashboard example in this presentation is available below.
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We have several presentations and a book release in the the month of April!
We will be at the SAS Global Forum author party Monday afternoon, April 12th. “SAS for Dummies” is being released today, April 5th. I will be at the author party at the SGF conference with Chris Hemedinger (co-author) meeting other authors and SAS conference attendees.
On April 14th at 9 AM, at SAS Global Forum in Seattle, “The Future of Marketing Analytics with SAS Enterprise Guide“.
On April 14th, we are also
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Which “green” activities are consumers performing in their everyday lives?
Activities that-
Stephen Few has has been an inspiration to us through the years. He has patiently prodded software companies to improve their tools for visual presentation of information, motivated by the sincere hope to improve the world we all live in.
At Freakalytics, we incorporate his content
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Practical tips for quickly building and maintaining these data insight tools Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday, March 2, 2010- 2:00 PM Eastern Time / 11:00 AM Pacific Time
Click here to read the details about this dashboard, from our blog post last June.
Embedding tableau public content is simple and quick. Your web site visitors will need NO software installation, since Tableau depends on native Ajax functionality used by sites like GMail. Although not officially supported in the current release, tableau public is viewable and functions interactively on the iPhone based on our simple tests!
On your Tableau journey, consider…
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SAS 9.2 is a big leap forward in many areas. One of them is a variety of new graph types and easy access to creation in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2. I think these two charts offer a fascinating look at the 2008 Presidential Election Results using SAS Maps and Tile Charts from the upcoming book, “SAS for Dummies”, updated for SAS 9.2 and available for purchase this Spring!
One of my favorite new examples added to the 9.2 edition of the book shows the 2008 presidential election results in two views: a map of the US with the winner by % margin of victory and a tile chart showing the state size, the winner and their % margin of victory. Due to the black and white nature of the book, these are shown in grayscale in the book and here on the blog.
2008 Presidential Election Results on a Map, Winner by State with Margin of Victory Read the rest of this entry »
The 1st workbook walks you through building a standard Waterfall chart in Tableau. Waterfall charts are intended to show you how cash balances change over time based on transactions that either add to or subtract from the cash account of a business.
As this example demonstrates, many non-standard chart types can be created in Tableau using advanced features of the product. This chart type is a frequent request of students in our public and on-site Tableau training courses.
→ 1 Comment- Add YoursThis editorial highlights a fascinating yet simple theory, that super-smart people (the numerati) have created extremely complex and little understood financial instruments that helped drive us to the brink of economic ruin. These instruments originally had applications of merit that were reasonable. However, the profit potential was too large and the opportunity for application in almost any area of investing was simply too great a temptation. Over the past decade, derivatives have become the instrument of choice for a variety of hedge funds, investment firms and even once staid and conservative insurance companies.
AIG is an excellent example of where these instruments can take a company. To date, AIG has required “just” $183 billion in taxpayer bailouts to date. That’s $183,000,000,000.00 or greater than the combined endowments of the top 15 universities in the US (ranked by endowment as of 2008.) Wow, we could have endowed another 15 top universities in the US with just the losses created by AIG!
→ 1 Comment- Add YoursImplement and practice these seven habits to make your work relevant, timely and actionable for the business and your customers!
As you practice these habits, especially step 1, you will eliminate one of the biggest complaints I hear from analysts- that their work isn’t appreciated or understood often enough in the business. Step 1 is about active listening, understanding context of problems and prioritization. Unfortunately, most analysts and statistical experts have never received any training in this area!
At Freakalytics, we are pleased to offer custom training for your technical and analytic teams. Using a series of short workshops, we can coach your team to better understand, practice and gain confidence in applying these habits. Please contact us for more details.
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