analysts

Analyst: creative or canned?

July 31, 2009

I picked up the term “creative analyst” in late June on the phone with Lyzasoft CEO Scott Davis. But what does he mean? He described one analyst he’s known of. This guy arrived at a new job with strong recommendations for his ability to tear apart a dataset. He could slice, dice, build related charts [...]

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Analysts run on “maker’s schedule”

July 29, 2009

Most of those versatile researchers of the data-driven world — the business analysts, creative analysts, or even cowboy analysts — probably run on a different schedule from their managers. Paul Graham’s latest essay compares “manager’s schedule” and “maker’s schedule.” I’m no analyst, just a writer. But the more analysts I meet, the more I find [...]

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Magic number

July 22, 2009

Establishing trust is the key for one analyst I talked today at the Tableau conference. Two years ago his career took him to a small, private university where he had to win over a few well-established administrators. They were to provide him data and be his clients. The key to trust for them was what [...]

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Two analysts’ paths

July 21, 2009

Yesterday I asked business analysts at the Tableau conference in Seattle about their work. Here are two quick sketches. • One of the two arrived at her present employer six years ago to do the company’s first analysis of its website sales. She used several years of accumulated data to show which content was making [...]

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A long look at Stephen Few’s “Now You See It”

July 15, 2009

Stephen Few gave a snappy name to his new book, Now You See It, and a cover that signals a gem — all black with a slice of sunset that highlights the “see.” The question, though, is who the “you” is.

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CIA’s insights on the psychology of analysis

July 7, 2009

Imagine someone writing a book about data analysis without even mentioning software. “To penetrate the heart and soul of the problem of improving analysis,” writes Richard J. Heuer Jr. in Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, “it is necessary to better understand, influence, and guide the mental processes of analysts themselves.” It’s the mind that does the [...]

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Lyza and Tableau according to Mako

June 30, 2009

Back in February when I heard about Lyza, I thought right away of Tableau. Despite each one’s different strengths in data discovery and analysis, each appeals to the same broad group. It’s an old group that’s getting new attention: creative analysts, or “cowboy analysts” to some. The like their data raw, not aggregated. They ask [...]

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Why data analysis is so hard to do

June 2, 2009

One part of data analysis is deciding which data to look at and which to ignore. Now “America’s finest news source” illustrates the task in “Police Slog Through 40,000 Insipid Party Pics to Find Cause of Dorm Fire” in its usual, thoughtful manner. Yes, I mean The Onion.

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Data intimacy

February 25, 2009

Long before Scott Davis made the self-service ETL tool he calls Lyza, he tried to find out how analysts really work. He remembers in particular the woman in a focus group who said, “I want to stay close to the data.” He didn’t understand at first. The data was right in front of her, neatly [...]

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