by Ted Cuzzillo
I hear a story like the one I heard this week and I want to ask the apparent villain why. There must be a reasonable explanation.
At first glance, he’s like other managers I’ve known of who throttle promising work for what seems like a personal need for control. “So tell me,” I’d like to say over beers, “what were you thinking when you denied that analyst free access to that data? What’s your side of it?”
by Ted Cuzzillo
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 and pivot tables — but only with canned data. That is, data someone had given him. This analyst struggled with synthesis — blending separate datasets, for example, or making a formula to derive values, or simply experimenting and asking unforeseen questions.
The ability to improvise and create something new is a “prime differentiator” among analysts, says Davis.… Read the rest “Analyst: creative or canned?”
by Ted Cuzzillo
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 questions, forage, synthesize, analyze, and publish.
Joe Mako is one of them. Tomorrow, he’s launching a website for people like himself who use both Tableau and Lyza. Makometrics will publish every Monday morning and sometimes more often.
Joe is a network engineer at a Midwest ISP.… Read the rest “Lyza and Tableau according to Mako”