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New data analysts and teenage love

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Search all the business literature you can and you’ll never find data analysis compared to romantic love. But, hey, why not? Love’s trajectories might hint at what the business world’s newly enabled generation of data analysts can expect.

These data analysts tend to be independent, are often creative and at least partly self-trained. They’re strapped to rockets from Tableau, Lyzasoft, Predixion, and others, tools that are at first deceptively toy-like. Aren’t they analogous to the garden variety teenager? Bothg groups revel in newly discovered tools, while both pursuits are fundamentally social — as Lyzasoft CEO Scott Davis observes about data analysis.… Read the rest “New data analysts and teenage love”

Coffee with “Tiberius”

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I ran into one of my first and best TDWI friends this morning. Even after all this time, he cannot yet be named publicly and, perhaps because of that, is free with musings on the industry and other things. We’ve tentatively code-named him Tiberius, after a meeting room at Caesar’s Palace.

This morning he’s thinking of a New Yorker cartoon. Two men at a bar are talking, and one says, “Are you just pissing and moaning, or can you verify what you’re saying with data?”

Our conversations are not always fact based, but we do our best. This morning we did it over coffee and, in his case, a crepe, and in my case a yogurt parfait.… Read the rest “Coffee with “Tiberius””

Upturn, downturn, hot dogs

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Everybody’s talking about the recession, but that’s just theory at the buffet line. There, mini-recessions come and go. One day it’s not-too-bad pork loin, and the next day it’s lukewarm hot dogs.

Those hot dogs, served for lunch last Monday at Sage Summit in Denver, came on the slowest day. My last nourishment was from Southwest peanuts hours before. So I took not one but two hot dogs, but then found just mustard, catsup and relish. That’s a downturn.

Things picked up on Tuesday. Shoppers arrived. For lunch, some kind of tasty chicken. Several department heads who came by on Monday returned with good questions.… Read the rest “Upturn, downturn, hot dogs”