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.
food
There’s always a food angle, even in text analytics
Text analytics was one of those things I heard about every so often. Like so many terms in this business, the term comes out of a speaker’s mouth or PR person’s press release only to blow away. There’s no story, no context, nothing to chew on.
Then came a press release at BI This Week with a rare combination: surprise and concreteness. It said text analytics would help with food safety. I’m all for food, but I had no idea what text analytics had to do with it.
I emailed UK-based Linguamatics, publisher of the nifty tool they call I2E. What’s this I hear about food?… Read the rest “There’s always a food angle, even in text analytics”
Not by muffins alone
Do the TDWI San Diego organizers think we’re on a diet? Are attendees and exhibitors no longer paying full fare? I try, but I can’t quite forgive the elimination of hot breakfast.
You may recall the spread that once honored us: chafing dishes full of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, potatoes, biscuits alongside gravy, crisp red seedless grapes and fans of sliced honeydew and cantaloupe. Also three kinds of muffins, cold cereal and hot cereal, too. All were continually refilled to encourage bountiful first and second helpings.
At this show, sadly, there are no hot chafing dishes, there is no melon, there is no cereal of any kind.… Read the rest “Not by muffins alone”