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Tom Davenport

The six genres of data stories

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This appeared originally on the TDWI site in September behind a paywall. It’s still there, but today they’ve had the 90 days of exclusive use that I agreed to.

Survey after survey reveals that about 80 percent of business users don’t use data analysis—despite all the marketing and “easy to use” tools.

As if in response to this sad showing, renowned author and academic Tom Davenport proclaimed that data scientists should know “data storytelling.” He’s right. Storytelling has transmitted knowledge and motivated action in every medium we’ve ever known. Stories around a fire, stone tablets, Gutenberg’s books, news, and e-books have all made use of stories.… Read the rest “The six genres of data stories”

My latest in Information Management: “‘Sexy'” Data Science is a Team Sport”

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The word got out last year: data scientist is the “sexiest job,” a late-2012 declaration by the renowned Tom Davenport of “Competing on Analytics” fame. Trouble is, “sexy” goes bad faster than fish.

“Data scientist,” still fresh, is my word of the year. In 2013, the data analysis industry discovered it, many loved or hated it, but most of all, we repeated it. Google Trends shows the mention of it soaring like the 1990s Dow Jones Industrial Average — and you know what happens next.

Alert as data scientists are to patterns, I wonder if many don’t shudder at the “sexy” label.… Read the rest “My latest in Information Management: “‘Sexy'” Data Science is a Team Sport””

Basking in a dashboard’s warm glow

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When some people look at dashboards, they want to see patterns but not reasons. “They don’t want to read the fine print,” said one attendee in Lyndsay Wise’s dashboards seminar at Enterprise Data World in San Francisco yesterday. That’s what the man learned in one data-quality project for a human resources department.

He was frank enough to call drill-down “the fine print” — the suggestion that the “why?” is just noise. He slipped out before I could find out more.

Had his complacent users been victims of abusive parents or bad teachers? I’ve worked with such users. I trust them, I like them, and most businesses couldn’t do without them.… Read the rest “Basking in a dashboard’s warm glow”