Author: Adam

An AI beat the human world Go champion – is the end of the world nigh?

On March 15th 2016, the next event in the increasingly imminent robot takeover of the world took place. A computerised artificial intelligence known as "AlphaGo" beat a human at a board game, in a decisive 4:1 victory. This doesn't feel particularly new - after all, a computer called Deep Blue beat the world chess Champion … Continue reading An AI beat the human world Go champion – is the end of the world nigh? →

Tableau dashboards quick tip #2: how do I know what size my dashboard should be to fit in a story?

Here's another little tip that is actually in the documentation, although perhaps not quite where you might expect, and besides, who reads that? In Tableau you can create "Stories". A story is basically a set of dashboards. However, the default "physical" size of the dashboard part of a story is smaller than the default size … Continue reading Tableau dashboards quick tip #2: how do I know what size my dashboard should be to fit in a story? →

Tableau dashboards quick tip #1: why is my embedded web page blank when published?

Tableau dashboards can embed other non-Tableau webpages within them. This can be useful just as a way to show an external web page within your dashboard, or they can have dynamic URL parameters passed into them based on the data in your dashboard, meaning that you can produce interactive product catalogues, mapping systems and the like. In … Continue reading Tableau dashboards quick tip #1: why is my embedded web page blank when published? →

The 2016 UK Budget – what does the data say?

On March 16th 2016, our Chancellor George Osborne set out the cavalcade of new policies that contribute towards this year's UK budget. Each results in either a cost or saving to the public funds, which has to be forecast as part of the budget release. Given the constant focus on "austerity", seeing what this Government chooses to spend its money on and … Continue reading The 2016 UK Budget – what does the data say? →

Using a Tableau Web Data Connector to access my Moves app location data

Never one to rush into things :-), here's the second part of my journey towards creating a Tableau Web Data Connector. Next on my plan was to try out an existing Web Data Connector so I could see what they looked like in practice. It's always useful to review examples of other people's work in analytical tools, … Continue reading Using a Tableau Web Data Connector to access my Moves app location data →

Simpson’s paradox and the importance of segmentation

Here's a classic business analysis scenario, which I'd like to use to illustrate one of my favourite mathematical curiosities. Your marketers have sent out a bunch of direct mail to a proportion of your previous customers, and deliberately withheld the letters from the rest of them so that they can act as a control group. As analyst extraordinaire, you get … Continue reading Simpson’s paradox and the importance of segmentation →

Stress, depression and anxiety in the workplace – what does the data show?

Stress, depression and anxiety are all disorders that can have extremely serious effects for the sufferer. The Health and Safety Executive list quite a few, of varying ranges of severity and scope. It's acknowledged that in some cases these can be brought on by problems in the workplace; an issue that desperately needs addressing and resolving given the criticality of paid … Continue reading Stress, depression and anxiety in the workplace – what does the data show? →

New website launch from the Office of National Statistics

Yesterday, the UK Office of National Statistics, the institution that is "responsible for collecting and publishing statistics related to the economy, population and society", launched its new website. As well as a new look, they've concentrated on improving the search experience and making it accessible to mobile device users. The front page is a nice at-a-glance … Continue reading New website launch from the Office of National Statistics →

Kaggle now offers free public dataset and script combos

Kaggle, a company most famous for facilitating competitions that allow organisations to solicit the help of teams of data scientists to solve their problems in return for a nice big prize, recently introduced a new section useful even for the less competitive types: "Kaggle Datasets". Here they host "high quality public datasets" you can access for free. … Continue reading Kaggle now offers free public dataset and script combos →