Mike Young, of Decision Workshops, has just released a screencast explaining how to use confrontation analysis to analyze political confrontations. He uses the approach to model the current tensions in Bahrain. The screencast makes extensive use of Decision Workshops' proprietary Microsoft Excel-based modeling tool. More information on this tool can be obtained by contacting Decision Workshops … [Read more...]
Frictionless data
Publishing your data isn't enough---consumers have to be able to find and use it. The Open Knowledge Foundation has officially recognized this through its Frictionless Data initiative. They propose: simple formats (e.g. CSV, JSON) simple tooling---i.e. the ability to get data in and out of standard software packages, such as Excel, R and Hadoop. bootstrapping the system with essential data … [Read more...]
An MBA in counter insurgency?
General Sir David Richards, Britain's most senior military officer recently published a reading list (of 90 books) for candidates to the UK's Defence Academy. I was interested to see books like "Blink" (instinctive decision-making) and "Thinking Fast and Slow" (behavioral decision-making) on the list. Maybe "Nudge" should be there too. Also of note is General Sir Rupert Smith's book "The Utility … [Read more...]
Spreadsheets at it again
Another week, another embarrassing spreadsheet error. Two Harvard professors conceded that they made a spreadsheet "coding error" in analysis that formed the basis for their recent book. James Kwak, in an article where he describes spreadsheet modeling problems at JPMorgan, said (of Excel) Because it's so easy to use, the creation of even important spreadsheets is not restricted to people … [Read more...]
Challenges for open data
Government open data initiatives, such as the US' data.gov and the UK' data.gov.uk are to be applauded, but there are still many challenges to be overcome. I'd like to outline three important ones. What are the problems? Open data is a bit like a hammer looking for a nail. There needs to be greater transparency about the problems facing government. Politicians are incentivized to present … [Read more...]