Support Analytics Blog

Join in and download Mozilla’s Firefox 3 browser.  I recently switched to Firefox from IE and haven’t really looked back except to transfer my bookmarks.  BusinessWeek claims that they now hold nearly 20% of the browser market share.  Firefox 3 claims to have:

• Many new features like one-click bookmarking and a smart location bar (whatever that is…)
• Added security
• Better productivity like spell check, session restore and full zoom
• Much customization with over 5,000 add-ons

Today is the launch of version 3, so let me know if things don’t look right on DSA Insights with Firefox 3.

Good luck and Godspeed!

Download Firefox 3 here.

RISK

I was enjoying a great round of golf at the Pine Hills (Jones) Golf Course in Plymouth, MA last week, when I came to a dilemma on one of the PAR 4 holes.  The yardage was about 320 with a wide open, but well protected green.  The source of my dilemma was which club to hit.  Do I take out my driver, which I can hit somewhat straight and GO FOR IT or do I go with a 3-wood or low iron and lay up?  Technically, regulation says it’s two shots to get to the green.  But, what do they know?

What would you do?  Without Risk there’s no reward.  Sometimes you just need to go for it! 

COMFORT

Hole #1 at my local golf course (Fairway Hills), where I play regularly, is a very short PAR 4 at about 319 yards.  The right club would be to hit a low iron or a 3-wood, both of which I am struggling with of late.  I often find myself going for the club I can hit the most consistently versus the club I should hit.  You may ask, so what?  In the short term, I may PAR or Birdie the hole using my driver, but over time, I will limit my progression.  Without practice and venturing out of my comfort zone, I will only get so good. 

My suggestion here is to try new things and practice them to improve your value over time!  There are always opportunities to learn new ideas, approaches, tactics, etc. to add to your toolkit or in this case, handicap.

From phdcomics.com, Graduate Student Motivation Level – Visualization.

I love the steep decline immediately after, "realizing just gave 10-minute talk on 6 years of work."

Last weekend I got a little carried away while enjoying some one-on-one time with my daughter. At just over two years old, she was able to design a better dashboard then many of the software vendors in today’s market (shown below). She understands that less is better…

Thinking back to grade school, I remember being introduced to fractions and percentages. Like almost every other person, I think fractions were taught using a pie [cutting] metaphor. e.g. halves, quarters, eighths, etc. If you didn’t learn with the pie, it may have been the candy bar. Either way, if that is how we are taught at an early age, this could explain why pie charts are so prevalent in business, annual reports, presentations, analytics, etc.

Pie charts may be less effective in data visualization scenarios, but when introducing fractions, they are effective.

Besides the fact that these two charts [above] are 3-D, I think they are very Tufte compliant. I can clearly see that the attention span of a two year old dramatically decreases after hour one and hour two (top chart). Also, note the percentage of color used to create the pie chart:

20% Blue

30% Yellow

50% Pink

I can just imagine what we could do with more colors, Photoshop and a larger data set… Forget the zoo animals, I may take this to the next level and start her on bullet charts, bubble charts and thematic maps . With thematic maps, I could reinforce learning of both geography and data visualization in one shot!

Recently, I made an appointment to get a passport for my daughter due to the new restrictions about U.S. travelers vacationing in the Bahamas. If you have ever tried to call the Post Office, you can empathize. The word NIGHTMARE comes to mind. I can’t tell you how many times I had to call just to get someone to answer the phone. I finally got someone to answer the phone and made my appointment for the next Monday at 10:30.

I arrived at the Post Office at exactly 10:30. The passport office door was closed and there was already one person in line ahead of me. Soon after I got in line, a family got in line behind me with their paperwork in-hand. I just assumed that they were running behind in appointments.

The Passport Warden exits his office with a family in tow and asks, “Who had the 10:30 appointment?” Surprisingly, I raise my hand along with the gentleman to my rear. The warden excused himself to get his appointment book (a notepad). When he returned, he said, “Mr. Rose?” I replied, “Yes, that’s me.” He claimed, “I had you down for 10:45″ and ushers the other family in.

I looked to my wife who gave me an icy glare about obviously getting the time wrong. Reading her mind, I said, “I’m positive it was for 10:30.” Finally, we got called in at about 11:00 and started the process, which only took about 10 minutes or so. I had a bad feeling when the Warden mumbled a comment to himself about the Patriots beating the Giants a day earlier. I also noticed Giants memorabilia on his desk. Of course, I just happened to wear a Patriots hat that day.

What really got me upset was when I saw the Warden’s appointment book (remember – notepad) that had in writing “Tony Rose – 10:30″. If it hadn’t been for needing an expedited passport and him controlling the paperwork, I would have immediately called him on his mistake. I could imagine telling him that he was wrong and finding my daughter’s paperwork in the wrong outbox (recycle bin).

My message here is this; if he had said, “I’m sorry, but I have inadvertently double booked. Who was here first?” All would have been well, even if I got there after the other family and still had to wait. Everyone makes mistakes. But, when you lie, making someone feel stupid thinking they can’t record the right time, that’s flat out wrong! I have made mistakes (though rare), but always take ownership, apologize and never make that mistake again. It goes a long way when you don’t try to lie, finagle, back pedal or play the blame game. Be humble, honest and never compromise your integrity.

[Stepping off soapbox]

2007 Best:

1) Al Gore’s presentation – An Inconvenient Truth. Yes, it was complete in 2006. However, it wasn’t until after winning an Academy Award in February 2007 that it became popular. It truly is a visual masterpiece! Also, I believe he used Apple’s Keynote software to develop the presentation.

2) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning , by Davenport & Harris. I’ve said it before, get it and read it.

3) New York Times – Simply for the two InfoVis pieces below. If you haven’t seen them already, check ‘em out!

1. Naming Names – Debate
2. Debate – Analyzing the transcript

4) Tableau Desktop 3.5 – Arguably the best data analysis and visualization tool on the market.

2007 Worst:

1) Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. I am probably in the minority group for not liking Super Crunchers. Maybe if I didn’t first read Tom Davenport’s, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, I may have had a different opinion.

The summary on the left is Super Crunchers. The one on the right is Competing on Analytics . I wouldn’t bet my house on Amazon’s reviews, but the ratings may support my opinion of the book.

It had some repetitive examples and I just found it lacking pizzazz. Since I’m not a quitter, I finished the book with the thought that it’s probably worth the $15 (3 Starbucks trips). Although, I don’t think I would recommend it like I have Tom’s book.

2) Microsoft Office 2007 (Office 12) was released on January 30, 2007 with a new look and feel, but still had the same old problems. Yes, it can handle more data, but the data visualizations are still lacking, the default charts are horrid and in-cell graphing is flawed.

3) Proliferation of gaudy dashboard applications (chart bling). I won’t name any specifically, but type ‘Dashboards‘ in Google and take a look for yourself. Gaudy, gauges, pies, background images – developers trying to cram as much as possible into one piece of software without understanding what the users really need to be effective.

For 2008, I want to discuss Intelligent Business versus Business Intelligence.

Happy New Year!

My gift you to; a post that should guarantee some laughter! What I like about this video is:

1. You’d be lying if you never shook a laser printer cartridge and got some black powder on you. Even gasoline can’t get that stuff off…
2. The ingenuity of trying to photocopy his monitor (makes me laugh just writing this).
3. Not a word is said the entire video.
4. After smashing the copier, he goes back to his desk as if to just sit down like nothing happened. Seems like there should be some PRICELESS reference here…

DSA wishes you a very happy Holiday Season!

Disclaimer: Please don’t try this at home or the office!

Don’t wait any longer to get those Data Visualization or Data Analysis books that are sitting on your Amazon.com wish list.  Today is the day to take advantage of the great bargains on the web and stay as far away as possible from any brick-and-mortar retail store.  Find the books you want, add them to your e-cart and checkout without any hassles.  Plus, with free shipping over $25 you don’t have to waste gas (at $3.00+ per gallon) or time running around.

Click here to get to Amazon’s Black Friday specials!

My top three favorites:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, E. Tufte

Information Dashboard Design, S. Few

Competing on Analytics, T. Davenport

As mentioned in an earlier post, Decision Support Analytics recently moved from Richmond, VA to Columbia, MD.  This was a move for the business as well as for my family.  Being that I work from home, I contacted my current cable/internet provider [Comcast] at least three weeks in advance to schedule the new services and a date for installation.  I needed to cancel everything at my old location and set up all of the new services at the new location.  Why they couldn’t just transfer the services is beyond me. 

What happened next utterly astonished me.  My appointment was between 12:00pm and 4:30pm on July 2^nd.  Normally, the wide window irritates me, but because I was going to be home anyway, I was okay with it.  Twelve o’clock comes and goes; Two o’clock comes and goes; Four-thirty comes and still no sign of the technician so I call the call center.  If you have ever called Comcast, you normally get a different person each time at which point you need to explain the problem from beginning to end.  Hence, the fiasco begins. 

4:30PM:

I explain to the Customer Service Representative that I had an appointment between 12:00pm and 4:30pm and it’s now 4:30pm and no one has come by.  I am informed that they can only see the appointment.  Once the actual day arrives, the information is transferred to their dispatcher who talks directly with the technician.  They won’t give you the dispatcher’s number so you can talk to them directly, that would be too logical.  They place me on hold for about 10-15 minutes while they reach the dispatcher and they in turn call the technician to see where they are.  The Rep comes back and says they were delayed and it will be around 5:00pm.

5:30PM

No one has shown up yet so I call Comcast back.  I talk to a different person because shifts have now changed, explain the ordeal again, and wait on hold another 10-15 minutes.  They come back and say they are still delayed and it will be about an hour.  However, they reassured me someone would be there tonight to get me set up.  You can see where this is going…

7:20PM

Still no technician and no one has called me at all today to give me any information.  At this point, I’m just a bit irate [hint of sarcasm], so I call them back and escalate the issue.  Now they say it will be another hour, but someone is DEFINITELY going to be by.  I have already explained that I work out of my house and it’s critical that I get up and running tonight.

9:00PM

[Patience shot] I started the process over again and contacted Customer Service.  What happened next absolutely astonished me!  After holding, so they could check with the dispatcher, the Rep comes back and says, “Mr. Rose, that job has been completed”.   Wait, it gets better… After about 30 minutes of me, (obviously upset) explaining to the Rep that no one came by and they obviously lied about completing the job, I suggested that they just get someone out first thing in the morning to complete the job.  That would be the correct solution, right?  Wrong!  Apparently, Comcast already lined up their jobs and confirmed them for the next day, July 3^rd.  Then they’re closed for the July 4^th holiday.  She explains that the next available appointment is July 5^th between 12:30 to 4:30.   I got heated, but never disrespectful, at that point.  I must have said that their solution was grossly unacceptable at least 20 times. 

I share this with you to illustrate all of the things NOT to do in customer service or designing business processes, which is related to an earlier post on good customer service at Walgreens and Ukrops.

I did get service installed on July 5^th and was pleased with the technician they sent.  I told them I wanted action taken on the first technician that lied.  In the end, I have service; with a customer credit of $75 for my aggravation.  That would have covered about 30 minutes of my time…  I probably shouldn’t ever have to pay another Comcast bill for the rest of my life to get over this debacle.

Click here to send us an e-mail to subscribe to DSA Insights and get updates by e-mail.