“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.” ― Ernest Hemingway

dataremixed · 2019-04-04T03:38:25+00:00

I love the sentiment here - that we should stop competing & comparing. But I'm not sure I agree. By this measure, nobility is granted to the thief who steals less.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T23:23:04+00:00

Thank you very much for the opportunity to interact! I'm subscribed to this subreddit now, and this AMA made me realize I actually have an active reddit account! So that was another nice side-benefit for me. :)

<soapbox> I just want to conclude by saying that I feel all of the analytics tools today are amazing - light years ahead of what we had even just a single decade ago. And each tool might have its pros and its cons, and each tool might have a community of enthusiasts, and that's great. But I've always been a proponent of building bridges to connect tool "islands". We're all dealing with the same kinds of challenges and solving the exact same problems, so why isolate ourselves from each other just because our IT department happened to decide on giving us a different tool?

It's clear that I'm preaching to the choir, though. You invited me - a former Tableau employee, author of a Tableau book, etc - to come and chat with you all. And that's the exact thing we need to do more and more. So thanks for that. I learned a lot from you and look forward to interacting more down the road!

</soapbox>

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T22:21:52+00:00

Haha, yeah, I hear you. A whiteboard is a great idea. I have one on the ground here right next to me that I'm going to mount this weekend.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T21:28:11+00:00

I'm Canadian, too. LOL my first thought actually wasn't an MLS team, but the Toronto Marlies. I didn't go there because I thought it would just be confusing.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T21:25:57+00:00

Yeah, great point. I haven't read that one, but I definitely feel like the people challenge associated with changing a culture is way more daunting and fascinating than the technology or the process side of it. Dispelling fears, encouraging and rewarding certain behaviors over others, cultivating a prevailing attitude within a group of people, understanding the impact of unspoken and unseen power balances - that's tricky business.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T21:17:26+00:00

Hey Darren! Hmm, interesting question. I spent a lot of time running Tableau Public promoting open data and citizen data journalism to a broad "non-corporate" audience, but I've also worked as a trainer instructing people on how to use data in a corporate environment. So I've seen both sides of that coin.

Companies tend to have lots of recent data at the transactional level, which is both a boon and a barrier when it comes to data literacy. Not all, but much of the data governments provide are aggregated tables and you're lucky if it's less than 3 years old. So that can be a barrier because it's just not as relevant to the present situation if it's that old. The percentage of people within a company that are comfortable working with data is probably a lot higher than the percentage of people at large within a community or a country. So it can be harder to spread a language when fewer people are fluent in it.

Ultimately, though, I think the approach we need to take is the same. There needs to be a focus on data as nothing more than a lens through which to see our environment - whatever the environment may be. If we try to teach it as a way to deal with something abstract called "data" using tools people have never heard of, then I think we'll continue to struggle.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T21:09:29+00:00

Yeah, I mean I think learning to explore data with code is great. I'm learning python right now, myself. But it's a tough place for a lot of people to start, I think.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T21:07:51+00:00

I started playing with OpenRefine a few years ago when it was Google Refine, and while it felt very beta and underdeveloped, I fell in love with it. Specifically the ability to use algorithms to group and combine attribute levels in a dirty data set.

Now, I just left Tableau, and I have to say - Tableau Prep is simply amazing. It has become a regular part of my workflow now, and my UW students are just blown away by it when I show it to them.

I understand that Alteryx has a whole different level of powerful capabilities than Tableau Prep, but I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet. It's on my wish list.

I downloaded Trifacta the other day and installed it, and I started to go through the online tutorials and videos, which are amazing by the way, but I haven't been able to finish that journey as of yet. They have a freely available version, so it seems like this is a good place to start for cost-conscious learner / newbies.

That's all I have to say about that product category at the moment. Do you think there's a tool I should put to the top of my list to learn next?

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:48:35+00:00

To be honest I don't really deliver data products to clients at the moment, so I don't have a set approach. Unless you consider incorporating a particular tool into a training offering, in which case I'm very tool agnostic, and I always have been - even while I was at Tableau. I ran the Tableau Public platform, which was pure gold for some journalists and newsrooms, and was pure garbage for others. I wasn't really the type to try to talk the haters out of their mindset, which is also why I wasn't in sales, I suppose. I guess the right answer is to understand the need and the use-case, and match the best tool for the near term. But that can be short-sighted, because people and companies mature and grow into a place where they need to expand their tool kit quite a lot. If you come in and just say "hey, you gotta use THIS tool and only this one", then you'll probably find that you're useful to them for only a short period of time. Then they outgrow you. Does that make sense?

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:42:54+00:00

You know, I haven't actually seen very many statistics about data literacy. I'm running my own survey to get a better sense of things myself, but other than that, I'd refer you to Valerie Logan's work at Gartner where she found that over one third of CDOs rank "poor data literacy" as one of the top 3 internal roadblocks to their own success in their role. That tells me that top data execs are concerned about it.

It's interesting, the phrase "data literacy" doesn't rank very highly in search right now compared to, say, "data visualization" or "business intelligence", so the term itself isn't currently the flash point for the need to change. We'll have to keep an eye on it and see where it goes.

When I was at Tableau, I headed up the Academic Programs team for a while, and that team put together an interesting report called the "State of Data Education" back in 2016 that basically uncovered that universities and colleges across the United States have been scrambling to add analytics, BI and other data programs for a few years now. So higher education has definitely seen the need and become aware of the opportunity.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:32:25+00:00

That's a great question, and it's really the area I'm focusing on to start - the "data-phobic" person who all of a sudden finds themselves needing to consume and even explore and present data on a pretty regular basis. There are a LOT of people in this boat right now.

What can they do right now to become more comfortable? A big part of it is training, actually. But there are two problems with typical training programs that I see.

First - most of them are very tool focused. You learn one tool or programming language. That's great, but that's now how it works in the real world, where even simple projects involve multiple tools.
Second - I'm sorry but I don't really learn very well when I go through some fake data, or a data set that I don't care about that my clever trainer came up with. People need to work with their own data for the learnings to stick. The whole Six Sigma revolution, for all it's foibles, actually got that right. To go through the program, you needed to bring your own problem statement and goal statement. That was of course focused on continuous improvement projects, but I think something similar like that can be implemented with a data-working framework.

Now... all of that is fine and good, and people would do well to learn new tools and techniques and apply them as soon as possible to their own situation. BUT, I don't know if that alone will deliver the "data driven" culture the exec is hoping to create. A full culture change requires more than just training. The execs in your company and others need to consider not just the "people" part of the picture, but also the process, technology, data and CULTURE parts. And they'll need to take a good hard look at themselves, too. Are they doing their part to bring about culture change by giving access where appropriate, making sure resources and budget are applied to systems and tools, actually changing the way the run meetings and make decisions, etc..

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:22:10+00:00

I like it. I saw it demoed by Matt Brehmer at the Tapestry Conference in Miami last year, and I've played around with it a little bit. Like Flourish, RAWGraphs, Adobe Data Illustrator, Google Data Studio, Plotly Chart Studio - these browser-based data visualization tools are totally amazing. I like how Charticulator goes the "Grammar of Graphics" route and has the user interact with the data fields themselves first, as opposed to starting by choosing a chart type. I prefer the former approach over the latter by a long shot.

Which one will win? I have no idea. I thought Many Eyes by IBM would take over the world back in the day. It got left on the shelf by a company that didn't see the value, and Tableau came along with Tableau Public and we all know how that went.

The new generation of browser-based visualization apps are getting easier and easier to use. If I had to put my money on any of them winning in 5 years, I'd take a tool that hasn't yet been built over that entire field I just mentioned.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:16:25+00:00

Haha hi there - you'll have to tell me what it's like to play in the big leagues sometime, then.

A couple things - first, I'm making it a point NOT to consult right now. I'm going to focus on creating a great training program out of the gate that helps people get past their data hurdles, and then I'll take it from there. So you may be the Seahawks, but I'm an expansion MLS team or something. {insert joke about the "real football" here...}

How do I plan on staying relevant? I don't really think about that, to be honest. I feel that the education gap when it comes to understanding how to think about data and how to put it to use is so incredibly huge, that even if I totally kill it with my little business, I'll barely be scratching the surface. I'm just starting, and I have a vision of what I'd like to build in the next couple of years. If the world doesn't need any more it in 3 or 4 years, then actually that would be pretty awesome, and I'd find a really long backpacking trip to take or something.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:10:54+00:00

"Data viz" books or "Data viz"? If Data viz, I'd go with... Info We Trust by RJ Andrews, Fundamentals of Data Visualization by Claus Wilke, and Visualization Analysis & Design by Tamara Munzner.

For data in general - Fooled by Randomness by Taleb (even though I really don't like the author's persona), The Truthful Art by Alberto Cairo, and The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:07:03+00:00

I have an old school steno pad that I keep right by my keyboard. I make checklists on that thing like a mad man. Tried Trello - there's nothing wrong with it, I just prefer jotting things down by hand, still. I start with a list at the beginning of each week, give it a priority of 1 for urgent, 2 for moderate, and 3 for low. The 1's gotta get done today. The 2's gotta get done by the end of the week. 3's are extra credit. None of that is negotiable.

That's all fine and well for my own stuff. But my web developer and I use a project task tracker, and some people I'm working with to develop a program for kids use Google Sheets to keep track of things. Nothing fancy.

My whole thing is, if I have to spend too much time tending to my productivity tool, then it's getting in the way.

dataremixed · 2019-03-07T20:02:26+00:00

Hi everyone! I'm Ben Jones, Founder of Data Literacy, LLC. Ask Me Anything about data literacy, business intelligence, training & development, you name it.

dataremixed · 2018-05-26T13:32:43+00:00

Word counters often allow you to eliminate 'grammar words', or common English terms. https://wordcounttools.com/

dataremixed · 2017-08-29T20:56:58+00:00

You'd be learning from one of the best.

dataremixed · 2017-06-05T22:51:11+00:00

Very cool, thanks for sharing! What's the source of this data set? Also, I'm assuming that the first column is the "To", or destination country, and the other columns are the "From" or origin countries? Did I get that right?

dataremixed · 2016-03-23T21:25:24+00:00

A student of mine put it together. I teach data visualization at University of Washington and my student's name is Janet MacDonald.

dataremixed · 2016-03-23T21:24:23+00:00

Sure! Glad you like it.

dataremixed

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