Following Tableau 9 Beta

This week attended an overview of Tableau 9,0  Nicely done global streamed user meeting.  I have yet to try the Beta myself. Impression based on the presentation.

I much like the use of the phrase 'visual analytics'.   Visualization is analytics, and all analytics should start with visualization of data.

Overall they are basing their changes on the ability to establish 'Flow'  (The psychology theory of Mihály Csíkszentmihályi ) when analysing and visualizing the data.  Good idea, but this depends on the kind and needs of data and decisions being addressed.  I am all for easy of use via Flow.

Quite a few new ways to select data points on maps, which for certain kinds of analyses can be very useful.   The selection methods are quite intuitive.

Showed the integration of simple analytic, like regression based forecasting.  Easy to overlay on existing data.    Well done, but still a minimal amount of analytics.  When comparing it to other visualization packages like Spotfire.

I like very much what they have done with being able to derive level of detail (LOD) variables.  This is a very powerful concept, an excellent way to do some kinds of analysis, like Cohort methods.  But at the same time it takes you away from the purely visual interaction with data.  It is nice to know it is there, but it also gets you into the weeds of analysis.  The average non analytic user may be confused. They have a white paper coming on its value and use.  ( Will place link here ) Good

New kinds of data cleanup, meta data inclusion, ability to manipulate the data during its ingestion. Data that is strangely arranged or poorly pivoted in its original form. All good ideas that should prove useful.  Lots of times you just want to get the data in cleanly for ready use with a minimum of effort.

Look forward to getting my hands on this, which should be very soon.

Rule Based Expert Systems

It is still possible to effectively build rule based expert systems.   I see that LPA has just established a new information and Download page.  Includes some good examples in a number of business contexts. Note how this relates to concept mapping.  Nicely done.  They write:

Rules without Programmers Self-service Expert Systems

Build your own expert applications without programming from simple decision trees to complex interconnected flowcharts.

VisiRule lets you capture your knowledge graphically, test and validate the logic and publish it so that others can benefit from it.

You can even present the VisiRule chart at run-time, as a map to help guide users through your decision logic. ...  "

(Update)   The comments contain a discussion about what knowledge can be implemented using such systems.   We discovered soon that maintenance difficulty was a key issue for updated knowledge in these systems.

Pi Day of the Century, and a Piece of Pi for You.

Tomorrow is the Pi day of the century.  It is 3/14/15,   More events and ruminations about the event and the inspirational, though irrational, number at the Wolfram Blog.  Including a way to get your own piece of Pi!

(Update)  How scientists use Pi.

More on Apple ResearchKit

Now everybody can do their part to advance medical research.
Medical researchers are doing some of the most important work in the world, and they’re committed to making life-changing discoveries that benefit us all. To help, we’ve created ResearchKit, an open source software framework that makes it easy for researchers and developers to create apps that could revolutionize medical studies, potentially transforming medicine forever.
Watch the film ... " 

Traditional TV Watching Falls

In the Washington Post, reporting on Nielsen  studies:

" ... Traditional television watching is declining faster than ever as streaming services become a mainstream feature in American homes, according to new research by Nielsen.

Adults watched an average of four hours and 51 minutes of live TV each day in the fourth quarter of 2014, down 13 minutes from the same quarter of 2013, according to Nielsen’s fourth-quarter 2014 Total Audience Report. Viewing was down six minutes between the fourth quarter of 2013 and 2012. And between 2012 and 2011, viewing time actually increased for live TV. .... " 

The Aloft Butler Brings you a Toothbrush

Finally a closer look at the hospitality robotic butler at the Aloft in Cupertino.  I remember when there was a version of the Aloft in Second Life that I 'stayed' in, but that is long gone.    Being used mostly to deliver things to your door.  How will this evolve?

" ... If a guest is staying at the Aloft hotel in Cupertino, Calif. and asks for a comb or a late-night snack, the guest may be surprised at who -- or what -- brings it to the room.

The Aloft Hotel in the Silicon Valley city has been using an autonomous robot as a butler, delivering small items that guests might have forgotten to pack, like toothpaste or a razor, along with snacks and candy.

The robot, dubbed Butlr, has worked out so well that another one of the hotel chain's properties has begun using its own robot and a third has plans in the works to adopt another. ... " 

Wireless Bio-sensors and Eye Tracking

Have seen this demonstrated in-store before ....  another example.   Particularly useful in understanding in-store applications that look at products in shelf context.    " ... iMotions and ASL announce the integration of live streaming of wireless biosensors in combination with eye tracking | Eye Tracking Software and Solutions - iMotion ... " 

Hear Every Voice in the Room

An IBM exec's key to innovation is the free flow of information
IT leaders often must navigate a range of personalities as they guide teams and advance projects, writes Phil Gilbert, the general manager of IBM Design. "[W]e focus on two things: getting everyone to contribute and letting everyone’s contribution be heard," Gilbert writes ... " 

Python as Language, for Beginners

In the CACM:   A look at Python, a computer language now often used for analytics, and increasingly taught in schools.   For a techno piece, quite thoughtful.  Have always thought about the differences in expression between natural and human language.  Learning Python is not much different from learning other computer languages now less used, like Pascal or PL/1.   It expresses algorithms and communicates with data.  It describes effect much more precisely than human language.

" ... The way Taylor Poulo sees it, learning to code in Python is comparable "to learning Latin and romantic languages." Once someone grasps the logic behind Python, the concepts can be more easily transferred to other languages, maintains Poulos, a senior majoring in industrial engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). "Once you get comfortable thinking in a different type of logic and using different words, it's much more comfortable to learn new things," she says, adding that she was required to take three computer science classes at Georgia Tech, all in Python. "Python did that."

Python, an open source scripting language, has become the most popular introductory teaching language at top U.S. universities—Georgia Tech among them—according to a recent survey by Philip Guo, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Rochester. Guo decided to conduct the research after noticing anecdotally over the past few years that Python was replacing languages such as Java as the de facto introduction to programming class in more and more computer science classes at universities around the country. ... "    

Machine Learning Advice From Practice

Via O'Reilly, a nice set of Machine Learning practice observations (not really hard rules).  These are mostly technical, for data analytics practitioners.  Some good thoughtful insight I had not heard of.  From the blog: " ... ML in the Valley ... ML insight and lessons learned from industry practice ... ".  Worth a follow.  I like seeing rules of thumb gained from practice, often the best advice.

Innovation Using Restless Dissatisfaction

I like the statement, you should always be dissatisfied.  And looking for solutions, or parts of solutions,  that can be fitted together to lead to better results ...   This blog is my statement of that search.  Join me.

Behind H-E-B's philosophy of "restless dissatisfaction" 
Part of H-E-B's success comes from the retailer's culture of "restless dissatisfaction," which keeps the company innovating, improving store formats and perfecting the customer experience, McMillanDoolittle Senior Partner Neil Stern writes. One of the chain's newest stores, a 91,000-square-foot location in Texas, illustrates H-E-B's philosophy with its expanded local and private-label offerings, a Cooking Connection kiosk to engage shoppers and its farm-to-table in-store restaurant Table 57 ....  " 

High vs Low Level Analytics

Some comments of interest by Vincent Granville: 
" ... Here I describe a case study: a solution based on high-level data science. By high level, I mean data science not done by statisticians, but by decision makers accessing, digging into, and understanding summary (dashboard) data to quickly make a business decision with immediate financial impact. There is also a section on smart imputation techniques, with patentable, open intellectual property that we created after investigating this problem. ... "  

Tableau 9 Beta Rolling Out, with Analytics

Have been a long time user of Tableau visualization, brought it into the enterprise.  I see they are about to roll out their latest Beta 9.0.  To address some frequent criticism, they say they are including more data analytics capabilities.  The problem often came up that you had to integrate even the simplest analytics from a separate package,   Attending a briefing on this in the afternoon to get a further understanding of the new capabilities.  Questions?  I consider this to be another example of the broad idea of automating data science, but to what degree?

Getting Control of the Digital Shelf

Straightforward steps to audit the presence of brands online.  By Schawk.

 " ... To get your share of a rapidly expanding e-commerce market, you need to provide customers with an online experience that’s as true as possible to the product they choose at the physical store shelf. 

This requires that brand owners gain control of the process of e-content development and e-content management. To get started, here are five steps marketers must take to ensure that the brand’s online experience mirrors its offline experience.  ... " 

On Technological Evolution

By Marcus Olsson (Nokia/Microsoft, Helsinki Finland)  Recording.

Last week I gave a speech at Hannes Sjöblad’s “Singularity Evenings” at SUP46 (Startup People Stockholm). I recorded it and put it online. Unfortunately the videocamera ran out of battery after 15 minutes, but on popular demand I have stitched up the audio and the slides.

Part 1: Introduction to Exponentials and how they correlate to disruption in business. I also talk about technological evolution, and give a brief introduction to the concept of “the Technium” as described by Kevin Kelly in his book “What Technology Wants”.
Part 2: Peter Diamandis 6Ds framework around disruption due to digitalisation
Part 3: First hand examples of how the mobile industry has disrupted many industries, like the camera industry
Part 4: Future Trends & hints on what I believe will be the next disruption in mobile, somewhere in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual- & Augmented Reality.

Via Jim Spohrer

New SAP Analytic Tools

Had not looked at SAP BI and analytics for some time, we were a well worn SAP shop, they now have new offerings worth a look.

SAP brings new analytics tools to companies large and small
A bumper crop of new analytics tools has arrived for business users over the past few weeks, and on Tuesday SAP rolled out two fresh examples. Both promising simplicity and usability for non-experts, SAP Predictive Analytics 2.0 offers updated capabilities for enterprises seeking insight into large volumes of data such as from the Internet of Things, while a new Edge edition of SAP's Lumira tool targets small and medium-size businesses with data-discovery features.

Combining the functionality of SAP's predictive-analysis software with its InfiniteInsight suite of analytics tools, Predictive Analytics 2.0 aims to help organizations uncover trends and patterns in massive stores of data.  .....  "

Complete Guide to Twitter Analytics

Instructive piece.   Was just asked to look at the analytics of twitter as an engagement, and thus an advertising medium.   Is it too ephemeral to be useful?  52 pages via Simply Measured.  You can turn on your Twitter analytics.   As other commentators have mentioned, even if you have a large twitter following, the analytics reveal that the actual engagement going on is usually very small.  This leads to the nature of a twitter feed, it can be long, but it is usually unseen.

Curating Personalization through E-commerce

Good approach, in use:  In Progressive Grocer.

How grocers can customize and curate through e-commerce 
E-commerce is a good place for grocers to start to boost customization and curation efforts, according to a panel of experts at the FMI Midwinter Executive Conference that included Bi-Lo Holdings Marketing Chief Bill Nasshan and Nestle USA CEO Paul Grimwood. Retailers should approach customization and curation first by working with manufacturers to get an understanding of shoppers through their consumer insights and product expertise and then by studying shoppers' purchasing behavior and engaging them via online dialogue, the panelists said. ... " 

GigaOM is Gone

I see that the tech innovation blog GigaOM  has shut down for lack of funds.  Too bad, they were often quoted here.  Had excellent content.  But hard to monetize without becoming all infomercials. Which now seems to be the norm.  Readers are still out there, my readership has more than doubled in the last two months.  Implications for other tech publishers?

Synchronicity and Decision Making

Synchronicity by Hassine Saidane   Which I had not heard described before.  A technical and academic view, but intriguing.

" ... In a previous article I argued that in order to ensure the  highest performance, decision makers need to balance the data driven actionable insights with intuition driven insights. In this article a new insight is added to the decision tool box. This insight is represented by an acausal rare, coincidental event that can have a huge impact on the decision maker's enterprise, although absolutely free. Such an event is called a synchronicity, first introduced, defined and modeled by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. 

Most of the ideas presented in this article are summaries and adaptation of excerpts from "Synchronicity", a book by Jessica Satori , and " Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an interconnected universe " by David H. Rosen. Besides integrating the concepts presented  in these books into a decision making aid, the additional contribution here is the derivation of metrics to measure and evaluate whether an event is a synchronicity. Such an evaluation boosts the awareness of these life and business changing events thereby potentially increasing the frequency of their use in decision making and resulting beneficial impact. ... "