If you pay too much attention to social media these days, it appears that we're failing our clients if we don't present data as a narrative. Data storytelling is where it's at. Dataviz (data visualization) is so last year. This view does a disservice to both dataviz and data storytelling. It fails to appreciate the range of dataviz applications and, by watering down the definition of data … [Read more...]
Digital transformation
Digital transformation. Yet another pretentious term that obscures more than it reveals. Every time it's uttered it's immediately followed by an attempt at a definition. My favourite by far is Unfucking your terrible use of computers. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the source. … [Read more...]
Sharks are definitely scarier than mosquitos
Bill Gates retweeted a World Health Organization infographic showing that mosquitos kill vastly more people than sharks every year---on the order of 100,000 times more. In his tweet Bill captioned the infographic with, "Why I would rather encounter a shark in the wild rather than a mosquito." Presumably he's referring to man-eating sharks. This was an informal comment designed to … [Read more...]
When Spreadsheets Attack!
Stand-up comedian Matt Parker talks about when "spreadsheets hit the fan". … [Read more...]
Decision Machines
A recent article on the Harvard Business School's Digital Initiative blog argues that we need to move beyond prediction to create "decision machines". It is decisions, not predictions, that have consequences. I couldn't agree more. However, I'm not sure that the current focus on statistical machine learning is going to lead us there. … [Read more...]