Stephen Few

Tableau rising

September 17, 2010

As Stephen Few delivered his keynote address at the recent Tableau customer conference in Seattle, he suddenly broke his rhythm to look at someone in the audience. “Is that Howard Dresner?” he wondered, surprised. It was. Howard is the man who as a Gartner analyst in 1989 revived the term “business intelligence,” and he’s one [...]

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“Streetlights and Shadows”

January 15, 2010

Some of the books Stephen Few reviews may at first glance to have little to do with data analysis. On second glance, though, they have everything to do with it. He often goes into the essence of thinking, insight, and decision making — core knowledge for BI practitioners. See his latest, posted yesterday afternoon, on [...]

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Just give me the data

July 16, 2009

Recent email to me from a passionate practioner of creative analysis tells how traditional BI is bad for genuine data analysis. As I see it, traditional BI processes are still designed to start with the answers, not the questions: “Oh, we can’t give you access to the raw data. Your tools (old thinking) probably are [...]

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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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Time for traditional BI vendors to “pass the baton”

February 17, 2009

The shouts from the back of the BI room seem to be getting louder. In various ways, they’re saying let Big BI die. Former TDWI education director Dave Wells, visual analytics critic Stephen Few, and Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot are back there. Others, too. Last spring, Wells proposed a new, people-centric definition of business [...]

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Some of us like to name things in BI

January 6, 2009

Stephen Few’s damning review of a new BI tool prompted a weeks-long discussion-turned-scholarly-fistfight over definitions.

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Finally, a good place for pie charts

November 14, 2008

The junk food of data visualization has found a home. Pie charts show up everywhere, just like trans fats. Visual analysis expert Stephen Few condemns them, and I’ll bet Tableau Software designers held their noses the day they added pie-chart templates.

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Craving value: sparks for a new economic engine

October 30, 2008

It’s hard to see through the smoke as our financial house burns down, I know. But what I’ve noticed is more interesting: the first signs of rebuilding. This month, three experts I read—visual analytics expert Stephen Few, Competing on Analytics author Tom Davenport and digital-media economy specialist Umair Haque—all seem to have knit recent blog [...]

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Good metric-making aims for the concrete and sensory

April 9, 2008

If you want to come up with effective metrics, forget brainstorming. Drop the creativity. Done well, it’s an analytical exercise, says Stacey Barr, aimed at deriving concrete, sensory effects to measure.

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The debate over “useful” visualization

November 27, 2007

That winery of mid-’60s TV fame Italian Swiss Colony and its mascot “that little old winemaker, me” often seems to apply in surprising places.

A few weeks ago at a visualization conference, the business intelligence community’s leader in visualization design, Stephen Few <>, told the room full of dedicated visualizers to be more useful. Some took exception.

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