Finally, a good place for pie charts
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.
Tableau is the new Apple
It’s hard to watch Tableau Software CEO Christian Chabot and Tableau visual-analysis demos and not think of Steve Jobs and Mac OS X. Chabot has the same bright stage presence, and his product has the same simplicity and elegance. Like Mac, Tableau makes you love it. In Monday’s keynote, Chabot couldn’t pace. The conference’s overflow [...]
User conference with a view
I often have to suppress a question while I listen to pitches for BI “solutions.” I want to interrupt and ask, “Hey, isn’t most of what you’re saying just bullshit?” I’ve found an exception. That voice didn’t even make a peep Sunday as the three-day Tableau Software user conference unfurled in Seattle. Last night at [...]
A new day for data
Almost no one has mentioned Government 2.0 in the same breath as business intelligence—yet they’re destined for each other.
A proto-dashboard that worked
Back in 1971 Chile’s newly elected socialists dreamed of what today we’d call a dashboard, and it was to run the country. They actually did build it, and just 15 months after conception it was good enough to thwart a nationwide strike.
Visualize this, Harrah’s
Around the corner from the TDWI World Conference I spotted a billboard-size sign: “We have 22 years left on our lease. We are here to serve you.” What’s it mean? I understood other signs nearby, such as the $14.95 and the “chopsticks combo special.” I also understood “we are here to serve you.” But for [...]
Brutally amazing: how not to pitch analytics
I went to the post office box and found a rhinoceros. He should have been a bull, bulls being more at home in marketing, but let’s not be picky. He’s a rhino, in profile, with spots. He’s hawking analytics software.
Alex Vollmer’s review of election day infographics
Be sure you don’t miss Alex Vollmer’s excellent review of election day infographics. He wanted to see the margins of victory, percentage of precincts reporting, number of delegates at stake, and other goals. He looked at the New York Times online, CNN, National Public Radio and other media.
Throwing light on a power company’s data
I guess even the guys who live and breathe data get lost in it sometimes. At one power company that enlisted the help of Houston-area Visual Numerics, there was so much data that no one knew how to start pulling it apart. Only when company analysts saw it visualized did they know what questions to [...]
BI predictions out the other end
I’ve read about an 84-year-old farmer in North Dakota who reads pig spleens the way mainstream fortune tellers read tarot. Sadly, he doesn’t service the business intelligence industry.
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