Tableau Public launches visual analysis for the masses
I’m sorry to tell you serious types out there, but visual analysis is often a game — in fact, one of the best games in town with Tableau Software’s visual analysis tool. Now Tableau Public is going to bring it to the masses. In the same way that YouTube spawned a surge of new filmmakers, [...]
Stalking the why: selling visual analysis
How do you show the value of visual analysis to business people? Dan Murray can show it in demos, but he keeps looking for the “magic dust” that explains in a snap. He sees visual analysis as a key part of low-cost business intelligence at small- and medium-sized organizations — and he’s set out with [...]
Visual analysis is pragmatic, not just “pretty”
So many of us who feel drawn to visual analysis can’t understand why everyone can’t see the value. “Pretty pictures,” the skeptics mutter. On Eager Eyes, Robert Kosara makes important points that I haven’t seen before. Toward the end of his post he writes, “We need a new term.” He rejects the aged and indefinite [...]
Blog for the times: on high-value, low-cost BI
Dan Murray expects to take another step this week in his thrilling rebellion, spreading the word on high value, low cost BI. Though it’s a rebellion and may burn with Che Guevara-type zeal, Dan’s methods actually lean way over toward Darwinian evolution. Revolution is expensive and risky, he writes, while evolution is intelligent and incremental. [...]
A long look at Stephen Few’s “Now You See It”
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.
Thrilling rebellion
Dan Murray’s taking on Big BI — and in just under two weeks at the Tableau Customer Conference in Seattle, he’s going to explain his four steps to rebellion — that is, “a high value, low cost BI reporting system.” Dan devised the system when the company he worked for — which had revenue of [...]
Lyza and Tableau according to Mako
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 [...]
Data intimacy
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 [...]
Some of us like to name things in BI
Stephen Few’s damning review of a new BI tool prompted a weeks-long discussion-turned-scholarly-fistfight over definitions.
Mashed data visualization for holiday analysts
Among the visarazzi— data visualization’s foot soldiers, scientists and evangelists—”chart junk” is a no-no. If you make a bar chart about trees, for example, don’t for god sakes actually show drawings of trees. That would be silly. However, the visarazzi probably don’t mean to prohibit chart junk food.
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