More data is not always better data

Like a lot of data-fans, I have something of a tendency to "collect" data just in case it will become useful one day. Vendors are feeding that addiction with constant talk of swimming through blissful "data lakes" and related tools, notably Hadoop and its brethren. Furthermore, as the production of data grows exponentially, the cost … Continue reading More data is not always better data →

Future features coming to Tableau 9.2 and beyond

Having been lucky enough to attend the huge (*) Tableau #data15 conference a couple of weeks ago - and by now managed to recover mostly - I have noted down some information from the keynote presentation and beyond of what features are likely to appear in nearby versions of Tableau. Any errors are of course of my own doing...it … Continue reading Future features coming to Tableau 9.2 and beyond →

Awesome Alteryx cache tool from the Alteryx community

Alteryx is a superb tool for data manipulation and it's generally very fast at what it does. However this only encourages us to put large volumes of data through its manipulation capabilities, which can cause annoying pauses during workflow development. Perhaps it's because your source database is non-too-fast or simply whatever function you're asking Alteryx to do over a billion … Continue reading Awesome Alteryx cache tool from the Alteryx community →

Tableau software is now free for eligible non-profit organisations and educators

Heart-warming news for non-profits who want to save the world via data analysis from Tableau via PRNewsWire: Tableau Foundation, part of Tableau Software's (NYSE: DATA) corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, announced today that it will offer free licenses of Tableau Desktop to nonprofit organizations Qualification criteria is currently listed by Tableau as follows: Be registered as a 501(c)(3) organization … Continue reading Tableau software is now free for eligible non-profit organisations and educators →

How to map geographies in Tableau that are not built in to the product (e.g. UK postcodes, sales areas)

Tableau has a nice ability to create point ("symbol") or polygon ("filled") maps to visualise spatial data on. However, in order to do this, it of course needs to understand where each point you wish to plot is in the real world. Several of the most common geographic identifiers are built in, such as country, … Continue reading How to map geographies in Tableau that are not built in to the product (e.g. UK postcodes, sales areas) →

Are station toilets profitable?

After being charged 50p for the convenience of using a station convenience, I became curious as to whether the owners were making much money on this most annoying expression of a capitalistic monopoly high on the needs of many humans. It turns out data on those managed by Network Rail is available in the name … Continue reading Are station toilets profitable? →

Microsoft Academic Graph: paper, journals, authors and more

The Microsoft Academic Graph is a heterogeneous graph containing scientific publication records, citation relationships between those publications, as well as authors, institutions, journals and conference "venues" and fields of study. Microsoft have been good enough to structure and release a bunch of web-crawled data around scientific papers, journals, authors, URLs, keywords, references between and so on for … Continue reading Microsoft Academic Graph: paper, journals, authors and more →

Kruskal Wallis significance testing with Tableau and R

Whilst Tableau has an increasing number of advanced statistical functions - a case in point being the newish analytics pane from Tableau version 9 - it is not usually the easiest tool to use to calculate any semi-sophisticated function that hasn't yet been included. Various clever people have tried to work some magic aroud this, for instance by … Continue reading Kruskal Wallis significance testing with Tableau and R →

A first look at Alteryx 10’s Network Analysis tool

Alteryx version 10 was recently released, with all sorts of juicy new features in realms such as usability, data manipulation and statistical modelling. Perhaps one of the most interesting ones for me though is the new Network Analysis tool. This provides an easy way to make network graph visualisations natively, something that many general purpose … Continue reading A first look at Alteryx 10’s Network Analysis tool →

Using CBT techniques to combat my insomnia – what does the data show?

Please click through and view the story interactively below. If anyone is interested in the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques concerned, here's the book I was recommended ([UK Amazon link])...I get no commission :-).