My favourite R package for: summarising data

Hot on the heels of delving into the world of R frequency table tools, it's now time to expand the scope and think about data summary functions in general. One of the first steps analysts should perform when working with a new dataset is to review its contents and shape. How many records are there? … Continue reading My favourite R package for: summarising data →

My favourite R package for: frequency tables

Back for the next part of the "which of the infinite ways of doing a certain task in R do I most like today?" series. This time, what could more more fascinating an aspect of analysis to focus on than: frequency tables? OK, most topics might actually be more fascinating. Especially when my definition of … Continue reading My favourite R package for: frequency tables →

My favourite R package for: correlation

R is a wonderful, flexible, if somewhat arcane tool for analytics of all kinds. Part of its power, yet also its ability to bewilder, comes from the fact that there are so many ways of doing the same, or similar, things. Many of these ways are instantly available thanks to many heroes of the R … Continue reading My favourite R package for: correlation →

Transactions by active subscribers formulae in Tableau

This blog returns back from the dead (dormant?) with a quick note-to-self on how to do something that sounds simple but proved slightly complicated in practice, using Tableau. Here's a scenario, although many others would fit the same pattern. Imagine you have a business that is subscription based, where people can subscribe and cancel whenever … Continue reading Transactions by active subscribers formulae in Tableau →

Lessons from what happened before Snow’s famous cholera map changed the world

Anyone who studies any amount of the history of, or the best practice for, data visualisation will almost certainly come across a handful of "classic" vizzes. These specific transformations of data-into-diagram have stuck with us through the mists of time in order to become examples that teachers, authors, conference speakers and the like repeatedly pick … Continue reading Lessons from what happened before Snow’s famous cholera map changed the world →

Retrieving Adobe SiteCatalyst data with R

Adobe SiteCatalyst (part of Adobe Analytics) is a nicely comprehensive tool for tracking user interactions upon one's website, app and more. However, in the past I've had a fair amount of trouble de-siloing its potentially immensely useful data into external tools, such that I could connect, link and process it for insights over and above those you can get … Continue reading Retrieving Adobe SiteCatalyst data with R →

Actually you can use variables, CTEs and other fancy SQL with Tableau after all

A few months ago, I blogged about how you can use Tableau parameters when connecting to many database datasources in order to exert the same sort of flexibility that SQL coders can build into their queries using SQL variables. This was necessary because Tableau does not let you use SQL variables, common table expressions, temp table creation … Continue reading Actually you can use variables, CTEs and other fancy SQL with Tableau after all →

Clustering categorical data with R

Clustering is one of the most common unsupervised machine learning tasks. In Wikipedia's current words, it is: the task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more similar (in some sense or another) to each other than to those in other groups Most "advanced analytics" … Continue reading Clustering categorical data with R →

Workaround for the Tableau “custom SQL” restriction on SQL Server variables

SQL Server (among other databases) has a handy feature for easy re-use of queries, in the guise of variables. You can declare variables and use them repeatedly in any query in the current session. That's pretty handy for any complicated query forms you use repeatedly, where each time you might need to change some basic criteria. As … Continue reading Workaround for the Tableau “custom SQL” restriction on SQL Server variables →

A few notes on Tableau 10’s cross-database join feature

The new version of Tableau, number 10, got released whilst I was busy sunning myself on holiday. This mean there was at least something to look forward to in returning to the world of work 🙂 It has many, many new features. I suspect one of the most impactful, in this era of data lying around everywhere … Continue reading A few notes on Tableau 10’s cross-database join feature →