DSA Insights

Wondering what we listen to hear at Support Analytics?  With the help of Wordle, you can now visualize our iTunes music library.  Some of the big artists jump right out at you - U2, Dave Matthews, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Coldplay, PearlJam, Aerosmith, and LinkinPark to name a few.  One big limitation is the size of the small, less prominent, artists.  They are pretty much unreadable.  But, that may just be the point.

“Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends”.  Source: www.wordle.net

Business Application:

I think word clouds would be awesome for brainstorming?  Think about this: Have someone on your team record all of the ideas of team members separately and use Wordle to visualize which ideas were the most prominent.  They would jump right out at you using this technology and an unbiased method of collecting.

A special thanks goes to Angela who told me about Wordle.

Here are some other variations of our iTunes library with different layouts, colors and fonts using Wordle.  Their customization is excellent.

I just can’t seem to help myself when it comes to sharing beauties like the pie chart below with my readers.  The pie chart was found here.  Yes, it’s colorful.  Yes, it’s an example of pimping your chart.  And finally, yes, it’s extremely ineffective.  Just recreating this chart accurately was nearly impossible because of the small slices that are not even visible.

It takes entirely too long to go from legend to chart, legend to chart, legend to chart, (you get the point) to cross reference the two.  A simple bar/column chart would have been a much better choice.

Here is my version that took me longer to figure out which values referenced which slice percentages than creating the actual chart.

Suggested Reading:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition

Visualizing Data

Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten

Creating More Effective Graphs

Here are two charts that débuted in the June 9th issue of BusinessWeek and reminded me of a recent newsletter from Stephen Few found here.  I have noticed that they [BusinessWeek} tend to use colors that jump out at you for that WOW factor.  I may not have picked this color, but when you see all of the graphics with the same color scheme on one page, it definitely works.

Here is the Excel color palette, which contains the lime green color.   In the chart on top, the graphic designer used the top color (black) and the middle color (lime green) found below to differentiate between 2004 and 2008.  In the map image, just lime green was used to highlight some states regarding the average cost per day for a private room in a nursing home.

As I learned from Stephen Few's newsletter, an excellent expert resource regarding color [besides Stephen's article} is Cindy Brewer's website found here.

Here are a few examples regarding the use of color in a column chart.  In my opinion, the first example below is one of the biggest abuses of color in chart design.

Novice:

Often, I see colors used in charts with the sole purpose to be colorful.  A perfect example would be the rainbow column chart (below), where a different color is used for each column.

Better:

A better option for the column chart would be to use more effective colors that are all the same.

Expert:

An expert may use the same color except for the column that they are pointing out.  By using this technique, the reader's attention is immediately drawn to the value for June (black).

Best:

A line graph would be a better option for showing the Widget sales over time.  Whenever time is on the x-axis, a line graph is probably a better option unless you're trying to illustrate a certain point.  If you want to highlight a certain time period, the use of text boxes [with high transparency] can be handy.

Do you think they mean the same thing?  I often find these two terms used interchangeably when I think they refer to different things.  Check out the discussion thread in our Facebook discussion group!

Support Analytics - Facebook Group Discussion

A few months ago, I wrote about an alternative way to present fractions (parts of a whole) instead of using a typical and flawed pie chart.  The first graphic below comes from BusinessWeek and the second one is DSA’s Excel created version.

Jon Peltier (Microsoft MVP) of Peltier Technical Services and PTS Blog, recently wrote me to tell me about a workbook in Excel, which contains VBA code to create something similar to our dollar visualization.  The results, which only took me a few minutes using Jon’s workbook, are below in the third graphic.  It’s a fairly useful tool to do something different for your audience.

Finally, the last graphic was created from a similar workbook in Excel by Andy Pope, Microsoft MVP.  The workbook (link below) contains instructions regarding how Andy was able to accomplish splitting the image.

In the related section at the end of this post are links to the workbooks and web sites of the creators.  Feel free to check them out!  If you are interested in how I created the DSA Insights version, feel free to contact me and I can walk you through it.

Thank you Jon and Andy!

BusinessWeek Version:

DSA Insights Excel Version:

Jon Peltier Excel Version with Easy Macro:

Andy Pope Excel Version (different Picture) with instructions:

Original Post:

Spending InfoVis, DSA Insights

Resources:

Jon’s Workbook, Jon Peltier

PTS Blog, Jon Peltier

Version of splitting a graphic, Andy Pope

Andy’s Workbook, Andy Pope

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures at Amazon.com

Here’s the list of participants to date for the DSA Insights Post Project.  As more enter the project, this list will be updated.  Thank you to everyone who participated!

• Changes to Charting in Excel 2007 by Jon Peltier at Peltier Technical Services
• Weekend Minis… by Nathan Yau at FlowingData
• SPAM by Tony Rose at Support Analytics (not eligible for prize)
• 5 Ways to Promote Your Business Online by Andrea Coutu at Consultant Journal
• Analytics: No one can agree on what it means by James Taylor at Smart [enough] Systems

Get your submissions in before the deadline on Friday at midnight. 

If you are already blogging, feel free to submit a post to me for consideration in this project and to win a prize!  Click here to submit a post.  Based on the feedback I have received and the gracious offerings from some excellent Authors, there will be more DSA Projects in the future.  Plus, who doesn’t like to get free things?

I have started a new discussion thread in the Support Analytics - Insights Facebook Group around the number one issue when analyzing data.  Think you know what I’m referring to?  Check out the new group to find out and add  your wisdom.

Support Analytics - Insights Facebook Group

Some areas that are typically challenging, but not my #1 issue, when analyzing data are:

• Collecting the data
• Getting the right sample
• Not enough data
• Too much data
• Selecting the right visualization method

Related:

Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning at Amazon.com

Facebook is listed as the 8th most popular web site in the WORLD according to Alexa!  I think Facebook serves some great purposes among a lot of silly applications and things to waste time.  The purpose of this group is to further promote the discussion and ideas surrounding Business Analytics and Data Visualization with a little consulting thrown in.  Many blogs, groups and web sites focus on the technical aspect of analytics and data visualization.  In this group, I will try to keep it less technical and more practical to just about anyone.

Click on the link below to see the new DSA Insights Facebook group.

Support Analytics - Insights Facebook Group

Related:

I’m on Facebook–Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook at Amazon.com

Authors James Taylor and Neil Raden are sponsoring a signed copy of their book, Smart (Enough) Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions ($39 value) that will be added to the DSA Insights Post Project prize list.  This is an excellent book, which is featured in the DSA Amazon Store because of its tremendous value.  Find out more about the book here. 

Don’t wait, send in your blog post now to be eligible for one of the prizes below.  If you don’t know about the DSA Insights Post Project yet, click here to find out more.

The list of available prizes are now:

1st Price (Choice of one)

Announcement:
It’s time for DSA Insights to announce an opportunity to win a prize in a way that should be fun, exciting and valuable to our readers. There are two prizes to be claimed, which are:

1st Prize (choice of one):

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte
• Show Me the Numbers, Stephen Few
• Million Dollar Consulting (TM) Toolkit, Alan Weiss, Ph D.
• Amazon $25 gift card

2nd Prize:

• Amazon $20 gift card

Theme:
Your task is to write a new post in your blog that is themed, “The most important thing I know about__(Enter a topic below)__, is ___.”
Available topics that follow the theme of DSA Insights are:

• Analytics
• Business Intelligence
• Consulting
• Data Visualization
• Info Visualization
• Excel
• Blogging (new 5/2)

Instructions:
Note: old posts written before today will not be accepted.

1. Write - Write a post using the theme and filling in the blanks:
   1. If you don’t have a blog, I will consider submissions for guest posts to this blog and, if chosen, it will qualify for one of the prizes listed. DSA Insights reserves the right to include/exclude posts submitted via this method at our discretion.
   2. Maximum of 3 entries allowed per person - this is per person and not per blog. If submitting more than one blog post, it has to be on a different topic.
   3. Maximum of 5 referrals will count towards the prizes.
   4. Please keep it clean and family friendly.
   5. It can be funny, serious, an essay, video, podcast, list, tip, trick, picture, etc.
   6. Give your post a good title as it will be the only text listed in this blog as a submission.
   7. Please consider a link-back to this post in your post so that your readers can participate or know that you are participating.
2. Submit - Once you have written and posted the new entry to your blog follow these instructions to participate. Submit your post to me by sending me an email using my contact form found here. Include:
   1. Name (as you want it to appear in my blog)
   2. Email address (must be valid)
   3. Message subject: DSA Post Project
   4. Title of your blog post
   5. URL of your post
   6. Referral - optional (who told you about this post)
3. Spread the word - Tell others about this post and if they participate you will receive 1 entry for each referral up to a maximum of 5.
4. Check back - All valid submissions will be included in a cumulative list in a separate post.
5. Have fun! Surf the submissions, inter-link between participating bloggers, post your favorite or top 5 submissions, and tell everyone you know about this opportunity! If you take full advantage of this opportunity, you will have up to 8 chances to win a prize.

Timeline:
Begins:
Thursday, May 1 (today)

Ends:
Friday, May 16 - end of day your time zone.

Winners Announced:
Monday 19 May - I will announce the two winners in a featured blog post. All entries (up to eight) will be listed and two different people will be selected at random.

Winners will be contacted and will need to provide a valid U.S. mailing address if a book is selected as the prize. International winners will default to an Amazon gift card delivered via e-mail.