Top News – Data, Data Warehousing, Analytics & BI

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November 11th, 2013
Stephen McDaniel
Chief Data Officer Advisor at Freakalytics, LLC

i5_2Finding it hard to make time to keep up with the rapidly changing world of data, data warehousing, analytics, data science, business intelligence and visual analytics?  We understand! Here’s our curated summary of relevant news that could help with your future data and analytic projects. We also add commentary on the topic, a summary of the article and the link to read the full article.

There are seven articles in this update:
     How Big Data Is Changing Science (and Society)
     Big data blues: The dangers of data mining
     2014 INFORMS Conference on the Business of Big Data
     Facebook System for Massive Big Data (Hadoop FS) Offered Free to World
     Paxata Launches Industry’s First Adaptive Data Preparation Platform
     C-Suite and Trust Both Affect Financial Returns on Analytics, Big Data
     Meeting a VAST challenge – Lincoln Laboratory staff create winning visualization
 
 
 
 
 
i6How Big Data Is Changing Science (and Society)

Traditional statistical approaches that long dominated scientific research are being challenged and augmented by new approaches from the fields of big data and data science.

HOW CAN YOU PREDICT something without understanding it? Simple:

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Data scientists & the data warehouse team-building success

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Data-Scientist-Tech-200Whether you are a CIO, data architect, or a data management professional, it is imperative to understand the different approaches, attitudes and needs of the next generation of data warehouse consumers. Traditional data warehouse users include reporting teams, BI teams (who created reports for the rest of the company), statisticians and others. In the past few years, this has been rapidly changing with the new roles of data scientists, the rise of Data Enthusiasts and the burgeoning population of Accidental Analysts. In Part 1 of this series, we focus on successful collaboration between data scientists and data warehouse teams.

Data scientists have been with us for many years. However, the moniker “data scientist” is a recent change. The same role existed (and still exists) with titles such as statisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists or systems analysts; however, having one of these alternate titles doesn’t necessarily imply that one is a data scientist, although a wide range of techniques may be used by both groups.

Traditional training for people now in data science focused on

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My experience with data analytics-Strata Conference

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Please join me at the Strata Conference/Hadoop World in New York next Tuesday, October 29th, as I talk about my years of experience with data analysis alongside the founders and executives of ClearStory Data. ClearStory Data is delivering a new solution that makes it simple for business users to find, combine and interactively analyze data … Read more

A Share the Data client project plan

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Stephen McDaniel, Chief Data Officer AdvisoryHere’s an actual Share the Data™ project.  This is a simplification of a plan developed with a real client, with details changed to remove any identifying information.  While every project is unique, this is not an unusual engagement. Share the Data™ engagements range in length from 3 days to several weeks, depending on project complexity and client resource availability.

Background 

The client is approaching a key turning point in their operational history- going beyond traditional reporting with mainframe technologies to an advanced data warehouse with web-based reporting, dashboards, self-service analytics and even advanced analytics to optimize customer recruitment, operational management and improve the overall customer experience.

All of these areas are a dynamic, iterative undertaking with each area interlinked and interdependent.  It is critical that the management team at the client work to prioritize, fund and support each iterative phase of these projects.  Likewise, it is imperative that each phase of these projects show an acceptable rate of return (or greater!) for the time and money invested in these initiatives.  Better data and analytics are not an end in themselves, but rather a means to a more profitable and competitive company.

Objective

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Tableau futures—seamless access to your data

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From the 2013 Tableau Customer Conference!

Seamless Access to the Data—coming in Tableau 8.1 and 8.2

Nothing else matters if you can’t get your data into Tableau. This was a common refrain I have said for quite some time, Tableau is irrelevant if regular business people can’t figure out how to get the data into the product. In fact, it is a very frustrating experience.

Tableau states that cleaning, integrating and reshaping your data should be available as visual operations. You shouldn’t need to learn SQL to manage it.

A new data connection interface was demoed. Earlier this year, I contributed to the vision and feature debates for this area as part of a talented team of people at Tableau. This team included Jun K, Dan C, Jock M, Chris S, Richard and several other great people. Here’s an example flow:

1) You have some data about bike rentals.  It’s in Excel or a text file and looks like this.  A bit rough-column names in all caps, start_time is a text field and some other important data isn’t in this file.

1_Seamless_Access_Data_001

 

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A brief history—Freakalytics and Tableau—since 2008

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Stephen and I are frequently asked the story of why we wrote the first book endorsed by Tableau Software and how we launched their original, in-person training program back in 2009. In fact, we have been asked about this so many times, I decided it would be worthwhile to share the details.

2008
Stephen first discovered Tableau Software while working at Netflix. He was so impressed with the visual analytic capabilities of the product that after working with it for a couple of years, he approached the executives at Tableau about writing the first book on Tableau, which was still a tiny company at the time. They were excited about the idea so we met with CEO Christian Chabot, CDO and Co-founder Chris Stolte and several other executives to discuss the book content.

July 2009
Stephen completed and published the first edition of Rapid Graphs with Tableau Software just in time for the Tableau Customer Conference in Seattle. Marc Rueter, now a Senior Director at Tableau and Technical Reviewer of the book, wrote

“A great work- this is going to be a much-loved book.”

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Free Tableau 8 e-book at the TCC Alteryx Pavilion!

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RGTS 8 Book Cover Front 1500Visit the Alteryx Pavilion at Tableau Customer Conference 2013 in Washington, DC next week to learn more about the value of Strategy Analytics and Alteryx for Visual Analytics.  Notably, attendees can pick up a complimentary USB key with Visual Analytics Best Practices including work by Freakalytics and the key even includes a preview of Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 and a coupon code for a free copy of the e-book! Note that you must redeem your code by September 18th, 2013.

This is the original guide to Tableau for The Accidental Analyst®.  Now in its fourth edition, this is the best-selling book on Tableau, trusted by thousands including many Tableau employees who learned Tableau from it- both before and after joining the company!  Back in 2009, Elissa Fink (CMO at Tableau) wrote about Rapid Graph with Tableau Software 5, “A must read for anyone interested in Tableau. Clear explanations, practical advice and beautiful examples!”  Just a few months ago, the Marketing team at Tableau ordered bulk copies of Rapid Graphs for their new customer acquisition program, reiterating their excitement over the four editions of this book!

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Free Access to Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8–Chapter 6

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Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 The Original Guide for the Accidental Analyst We are pleased to provide free access to our book for all site members. It is also available as a printed book on Amazon. The home page for this release is here. Read Chapter 6 (pages 97-118)      Take over with Tableau—View structure,           Marks … Read more

Free Access to Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8–Chapter 5

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Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 The Original Guide for the Accidental Analyst We are pleased to provide free access to our book for all site members. It is also available as a printed book on Amazon. The home page for this release is here. Read Chapter 5 (pages 79-96)      Advanced view types in Tableau-79           Scatter … Read more