Data Visualization: readings

Showing posts with label readings. Show all posts

20140105

Data Visualization readings - last 4 months of 2013.

(time to read is shrinking...)

0. The Once and Future Prototyping Tool of Choice
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-once-and-future-prototyping-tool-of.html

1. Block by Block, Brooklyn’s Past and Present
http://bklynr.com/block-by-block-brooklyns-past-and-present/

2. Data Visualization and the Blind
http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1756

3. WHY ABRAHAM LINCOLN LOVED INFOGRAPHICS
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/why-abraham-lincoln-loved-infographics.html#

4. Old Charts
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2q8kzdxbac]

5. Back To Basics
http://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/back-to-basics/

6. In-Memory Data Grid Key to TIBCO's Strategy
http://www.datanami.com/datanami/2013-10-21/in-memory_data_grid_key_to_tibco_s_strategy.html

7. Submarine Cable Map
http://visual.ly/submarine-cable-map?view=true

8. Interview with Nate Silver:
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/09/nate-silver-on-finding-a-mentor-teaching-yourself-statistics-and-not-settling-in-your-career/

9. Qlikview.Next will be available in 2014
http://apandre.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/qlikview-next/

10. Importance of color?
http://www.qualia.hr/why-is-color-so-important-in-data-visualization/#

11. Qlikview.Next has a gift for Tableau and Datawatch
http://apandre.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/qlik-next-has-gift/

12. (October 2013) Tableau posts 90% revenue gain and tops 1,000 staffers, files for $450 million secondary offering
http://www.geekwire.com/2013/tableau-software/#

13. The Science Of A Great Subway Map
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3020708/evidence/the-science-of-a-great-subway-map

14. SEO Data Visualization with Tableau
http://www.blastam.com/blog/index.php/2013/10/how-to-create-awesome-seo-data-visualization-with-tableau/

15. John Tukey “Badmandments”
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2013/11/john-tukey-badmandments-lessons-from-great-statistician.html#

Supplementary BADMANDMENTS:

91. NEVER plan any analysis before seeing the DATA.

92. DON'T consult with a statistician until after collecting your data.

94. LARGE enough samples always tell the truth

16. Thinking about proper uses of data visualization.
http://data-visualization-software.com/finally-some-clear-thinking-about-proper-uses-of-data-visualization/

17. Big BI is Stuck: Illustrated by SAP BusinessObjects Explorer
http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=727

18. IBM (trying to catch up?) bets on big data visualization
http://www.zdnet.com/ibm-bets-on-big-data-visualization-7000022741/

19. Site features draft designs and full views of the Treemap Art project (By Ben Shneiderman)
http://treemapart.wordpress.com/
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap-history/
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap/
http://treemapart.wordpress.com/full-views/
http://treemapart.wordpress.com/category/draft-designs/

20. A Guide to the Quality of Different Visualization Venues
http://eagereyes.org/blog/2013/a-guide-to-the-quality-of-different-visualization-venues

21. Short History of (Nothing) Data Science
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/05/28/a-very-short-history-of-data-science/

22. Storytelling: Hans Rosling at Global Health - beyond 2015

23. DataWatch Quarterly Review: Rapid Growth Finally Materializing
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1872591-datawatch-quarterly-review-rapid-growth-finally-materializing

24. QlikView Extension – D3 Animated Scatter Chart
http://www.qlikblog.at/2574/qlikview-extension-animated-scatter-chart/

25. SlopeGraph for QlikView (D3SlopeGraph QlikView Extension)
http://www.qlikblog.at/3093/slopegraph-for-qlikview-d3slopegraph-qlikview-extension/

26. Recipe for a Pareto Analysis
http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/qlikviewdesignblog/2013/12/09/pareto-analysis

27. Color has meaning
http://www.juiceanalytics.com/design-principles/color-has-meaning/#

28. TIBCO's Return To License Growth Frustratingly Inconsistent
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1909571-tibcos-return-to-license-growth-frustratingly-inconsistent

29. Automated Semantics and BI
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2013/12/30/why-automated-semantics-will-solve-the-bi-dashboard-crisis/

30. What is wrong with definition of Data Science?
http://www.kdnuggets.com/2013/12/what-is-wrong-with-definition-data-science.html

31. Scientific data became so complex, we have to Invent new Math to deal with it
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/topology-data-sets/

32. Samples

20140101

Selected Tableau Readings after TCC13

Selected Tableau Readings after TCC13 (since September 18, 2013)

30. 2013 Winners:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/12/2013-award-winners-2272
Happy New Year!

20130908

Summer Readings from my Google+ Page

While blog preserving my observations and thoughts, it preventing me to spend enough time to read what other people thinking and saying, so I created almost 2 years ago the extension of this blog in the form of 2 Google+ pages http://tinyurl.com/VisibleData and http://tinyurl.com/VisualizationWithTableau , where I accumulated all reading pointers for myself and gradually reading those materials when I have time.

Those 2 pages magically became extremely popular (this is unintended result) with total more than 5000 Google+ followers as of today. For example here is a Chart showing monthly growth of the number of followers for the main extension of this blog http://tinyurl.com/VisibleData :

So please see below some samples of Reading Pointers accumulated over last 3 months of summer by my Google+ pages:

Author trying to simplify BigData Definition as following: "BigData Simplified: Too much data to fit into a single server": http://yottascale.com/entry/the-colorful-secrets-of-bigdata-platforms

Recent talk from Donald Farmer: http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/06/touch-the-next-frontier-of-business-intelligence/

Dmitry pointing to implementation Disaster of Direct Discovery in Qlikview 11.2: http://bi-review.blogspot.com/2013/04/first-look-at-qlikview-direct-discovery.html

Specs for Tableau in Cloud: https://www.tableausoftware.com/products/online/specs

The DB-Engines Monthly Ranking ranks database management systems according to their popularity. Turned out that only 3 DBMSes are popular: Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL:

http://db-engines.com/en/ranking

http://db-engines.com/en/ranking_trend

According to Dr. Andrew Jennings, chief analytics officer at FICO and head of FICO Labs, three main skills of data scientist are the same 3 skills I tried to find when hiring programmers for my teams 5, 10, 20 and more years ago: 1. Problem-Solving Skills. 2. Communications Skills. 3. Open-Mindedness. This makes all my hires for last 20+ years Data Scientists, right? See it here: http://www.informationweek.com/big-data/news/big-data-analytics/3-key-skills-of-successful-data-scientis/240159803

A study finds the odds of rising to another income level are notably low in certain cities, like Atlanta and Charlotte, and much higher in New York and Boston: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/business/in-climbing-income-ladder-location-matters.html

Tableau is a prototyping tool: http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-once-and-future-prototyping-tool-of.html

Why More Data and Simple Algorithms Beat Complex Analytics Models: http://data-informed.com/why-more-data-and-simple-algorithms-beat-complex-analytics-models/

New Census Bureau Interactive Map Shows Languages Spoken in America: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb13-143.html

Google silently open sourced a tool called word2vec, prepackaged deep-learning software designed to understand the relationships between words with no human guidance. It actually similar to known for a decade methods called PLSI and PLSA:

http://gigaom.com/2013/08/16/were-on-the-cusp-of-deep-learning-for-the-masses-you-can-thank-google-later/

https://code.google.com/p/word2vec/

“Money is not the only reward of education, yet it is surely the primary selling point used to market data science programs, and the primary motivator for students. But there’s no clear definition of data science and no clear understanding of what knowledge employers are willing to pay for, or how much they will pay, now or in the future. Already I know many competent, diligent data analysts who are unemployed or underemployed. So, I am highly skeptical that the students who will invest their time and money in data science programs will reap the rewards they have been led to expect.”: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/08/19/data-science-whats-the-half-life-of-a-buzzword/

Some good blog-posts from InterWorks:

https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mfowler/2013/08/16/aggregating-extracts-%E2%80%93-why-and-how-would-i-do-such-thing

http://www.interworks.com/blogs/tspaulding/2013/08/07/understanding-layout-containers-tableau

Technique for using Tableau data blending to create a dynamic, data-driven “parameter”: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/creating-a-dynamic-parameter-with-a-tableau-data-blend/

More about Colors:

http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color/

http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color-connecting-color-to-meaning/

http://blog.visual.ly/subtleties-of-color-different-types-of-data-require-different-color-schemes/

http://interworks.co.uk/tableau/using-custom-colour-palettes/

http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/qlikviewdesignblog/2013/08/16/color-codes

Russian Postcodes are collected and partially visualized:

http://tableaumapping.bi/2013/08/23/russia-postcodes/

http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/RussiaPolygons/RussiaPostcodes?:embed=y&:display_count=no

http://acuitybusiness.com/blog/bid/175066/Three-Reasons-Why-Companies-Should-Outlaw-Excel

EXASolution claims to be up to 1000 times faster than traditional databases and the fastest database in the world - based on in memory computing.
http://www.exasol.com/en/exasolution/technical-details.html

web interest to Tableau and Qlikview:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=qlikview%2C+tableau%2C+spotfire%2C+microstrategy#q=tableau%2C%20microstrategy%2C%20qlikview%2C%20spotfire&geo=US&date=9%2F2008%2061m&cmpt=q

20130711

Contractor's Rate vs. Full-Time Employee Pay

I got many questions from Data Visualization Blog's visitors about differences between compensation for full-time employees and contractors. It turned out that many visitors are actually contractors, hired because of their Tableau or Qlikview or Spotfire skills and also some visitors consider a possibility to convert to consulting or vice versa: from consulting to FullTimers. I am not expert in all these compensation and especially benefits-related questions, but I promised myself that my blog will be driven by vistors's requests, so I google a little about Contractor vs. Full-Time worker compensation and below is brief description of what I got:

Federal Insurance Contribution Act mandates Payroll Tax splitted between employer (6.2% Social Security with max $$7049.40 and 1.45% Medicare on all income) and employee, with total (2013) as 15.3% of gross compensation.

In addition you have to take in account employer's contribution (for family it is about $1000/per month) to medical benefits of employee, Unemployment Taxes, employer's contribution to 401(k), STD and LTD (short and long term disability insurances), pension plans etc.

I also added into my estimate of contractor rate the "protection" for at least 1 month GAP between contracts and 1 month of salary as bonus for full-time employees.

Basically the result of my minimal estimate as following: you need to get as a contractor the rate at least 50% more than base hourly rate of the full-time employee. This base hourly rate of full-time employee I calculate as employee's base salary divided on 1872 hours: 1872 = (52 weeks*40 hours - 3 weeks of vacation - 5 sick days - 6 holidays) = 2080 hours - 208 hours (Minimum for a reasonable PTO, Personal Time Off) = 1872 working hours per year.

I did not get into account any variations related to the usage of W2 or 1099 forms or Corp-To-Corp arrangements and many other fine details (like relocation requirements and overhead associated with involvement of middlemen like headhunters and recruiters) and differences between compensation of full-time employee and consultant working on contract - this is just a my rough estimate - please consult with experts and do not ask me any questions related to MY estimate, which is this:

Contractor Rate should be 150% of the base rate of a FullTimer

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdEtvdGFHZnBRTjNQNmFaOWRIbGlMTXc&output=html&widget=true" width="510" height="790" /]

In general, using Contractors (especially for business analytics) instead of Full-timers is basically the same mistake as outsourcing and off-shoring: companies doing that do not understand that their main assets are full-time people. Contractors are usually not engaged and they are not in business to preserve intellectual property of company.

20130531

Tableau 8 Reading Pointers, February-May 2013

Stephen Few asking you a tricky question: Are You a Data Scientist?: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1719 . It seems to me that Stephen agrees with me that 3 Terms: Data Scientist, Data Science and Big Data are full of BS... or as our VP will say: "a Bunch of Malarkey"...

3 very important articles by Russel Christopher about History Tables in Tableau 8:A funny "Preview" by Stephen Few of Tableau 9: Gauges?!: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1706

Leverage PowerShell and Tableau to Extract Server Datasources: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/05/28/leverage-powershell-and-tableau-extract-server-datasources

Tableau 7 data dictionary: http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/50438516817/better-late-than-never-tableau-7-data-dictionary

Collection of Good Practices, provided by Tableau: http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/community/best-practices

Tableau Server has many built in features to promote data exploration, collaboration, and security. The Data Server is arguably the most powerful of these tools but is commonly overlooked and underutilized. Answer these questions to see how the Data Server can save you time and increase productivity. http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/4/unleash-tableau-data-server-23038

Using Tableau 8 to Leverage Your 'Big-ish' Data: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/08/using-tableau-8-leverage-your-big-ish-data

"New in 8: Word Clouds": http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/02/new-8-word-clouds-1825

“What Makes a Chart Boring?”: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1612

Emotional reactions to Tableau 8: http://www.datarevelations.com/dylans-gone-electric-emotional-reactions-to-tableau-8.html

Leverage Multiple Tableau Data Extracts for Big Data in Tableau 8: : https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/25/leverage-multiple-tableau-data-extracts-big-data-tableau-8

Leverage the Tableau 8 Tableau Data Extract Command-Line Utility Without Tabcmd : https://www.interworks.com/blogs/mroberts/2013/04/15/leverage-tableau-8-tableau-data-extract-command-line-utility-without-tabcm

Very popular article from Stephen Few about Tableau losing the clear vision of its youth collected 49 comments from known experts : http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1532 and most interesting, 50th comment came from Stephen fimself: "I recently learned that when my review of Tableau 8 was published, Tableau employees were forbidden from responding publicly".

UK Boundary Polygon Data from Information Lab: http://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2013/03/25/uk-area-polygon-mapping-in-tableau/

Sample of how to use DataExtract API with C#/.NET: http://community.tableausoftware.com/message/203714#203714

Tableau Data Blending, Sparse Data, Multiple Levels of Granularity, and Improvements in Version 8: http://drawingwithnumbers.artisart.org/tableau-data-blending-sparse-data-multiple-levels-of-granularity-and-improvements-in-version-8/

Tableau Custom SQL connections through the JET driver: https://www.interworks.com/blogs/jwright/2013/02/22/musings-tableau-custom-sql-connections-through-jet-driver

Software company XL Cubed has incorporated Bandlines into their product, but comments to post showing that Tableau has it fro a while too: http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=1485

Stepheb Few introduced Bandlines as Sparklines Enriched with Information about Magnitude and Distribution: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/introducing_bandlines.pdf

20130131

Tableau Readings, January 2013

Best of the Tableau Web... December 2012:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/1/best-tableau-web-december-2012-20758
Top 100 Q4 2012 from Tableau Public:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/public/blog/2013/01/top-100-q4-2012-1765
eBay's usage of Tableau as the front-end for big data, Teradata and Hadoop with 52 petabytes of
data on everything from user behavior to online transactions to customer shipments and much more:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/big-data/big-data-visualization-big-deal-ebay-208589
Why The Information Lab recommends Tableau Software:
http://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2013/01/04/recommend-tableau-software/
Fun with #Tableau Treemap Visualizations
http://tableaulove.tumblr.com/post/40257187402/fun-with-tableau-treemap-visualizations
Talk slides: Tableau, SeaVis meetup & Facebook, Andy Kirk's Facebook Talk from Andy Kirk
http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2013/01/talk-slides-tableau-seavis-meetup-facebook/
Usage of RAM, Disk and Data Extracts with Tableau Data Engine:
http://www.tableausoftware.com/about/blog/2013/1/what%E2%80%99s-better-big-data-analytics-
memory-or-disk-20904
Migrating Tableau Server to a New Domain
https://www.interworks.com/blogs/bsullins/2013/01/11/migrating-tableau-server-new-domain
SAS/Tableau Integration
http://www.see-change.co/services/sastableau-integration/
IFNULL - is not "IF NULL", is "IF NOT NULL"
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2012/09/isnull-is-not-is-null-is-is-not-null.html
Worksheet and Dashboard Menu Improvements in Tableau 8:
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/01/tv8-worksheet-and-dashboard-menu.html
Jittery Charts - Why They Dance and How to Stop Them:
http://tableaufriction.blogspot.com/2013/01/jittery-charts-and-how-to-fix-them.html
Tableau Forums Digest #8
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/06/67/
Tableau Forums Digest #9
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/tableau-forums-digest-9/
Tableau Forums Digest #10
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/tableau-forums-digest-10/
Tableau Forums Digest #11
http://shawnwallwork.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/tableau-forums-digest-11/
implementation of bandlines in Tableau by Jim Wahl (+ Workbook):
http://community.tableausoftware.com/message/198511

20120311

to read or to write? - that is the question

I was silent for a while for a reason: I owe myself to read a big pile of books, articles and blog posts by many authors - I have to read it before I can write something myself. List is huge and it goes many weeks back! I will sample a sublist here with some relatively fresh reading materials in no particular order:

1. Excellent "Clearly and Simply" blog by Robert Mundigl, here are just 2 samples:

http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2012/02/6-famous-paintings-in-tableau.html

http://www.clearlyandsimply.com/clearly_and_simply/2012/03/create-your-own-filled-maps-in-tableau.html

5. Interesting blog by Josh Tapley: http://data-ink.com/

6. A must read blog of Stephen Wolfram, just take a look on his 2 last posts:

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/02/launching-a-democratization-of-data-science/

http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/

7. Nice post by my friend John Callan: http://community.qlikview.com/blogs/theqlikviewblog/2012/03/09/why-discovery-really-matters

8. I am trying to follow David Raab as much as I can:

http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2012/02/sas-unveils-high-performance-analytics.html

http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2012/03/bi-vendor-qliktech-reveals-qlikview.html

9. As always, interesting articles from Timo Elliott:

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2011/03/business-analytics-vs-business-intelligence.html

http://timoelliott.com/blog/2012/02/what-i-found-interesting-about-gartner-bi-summit-2012-london.html

10. Huge set of articles from variety of Sources about newly released or about to be released xVelocity, PowerPivot2, SQL Server 2012, SSDT (SQl Server Data Tools), VS11 etc.

11. Here is a sample of article with which I disagree (I think OBIEE is TWO generations behind of Qlikview, Tableau and Spotfire), but still need to read it:

http://www.projectedconsulting.com/index.php/component/wordpress/2012/03/qlikview-versus-bi-applications-and-obiee

this list is go on and on and on, so answer on my own question is: to read!

Below is a prove (unrelated to Data Visualization, but cannot resist to publishing it - I did the spreadsheet below by myself) - rather for myself, that reading can help to avoid mistakes (sounds funny, I know). For example if you will listen last week's iPropaganda from iChurch, you will think that new iPad 2012 is the best tablet on market. But if you read carefully specification of new iPad 2012 and compare it (after careful reading) with specifications of new Asus Transformer Pad Infinity, you will have a different choice:

[googleapps domain="docs" dir="spreadsheet/pub" query="key=0AuP4OpeAlZ3PdEwyYzFIOTNsRFlVd0o1a2xaSkxvNmc&output=html&widget=true" width="510" height="600" /]

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20140105

More DV Readings from 2013