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One point in this video that made me happy to hear is that others realize that companies are not cutting back on analytics and technology related to better data and analysis programs.  For the last few years, I have personally seen money being moved into areas of analytics for all departments that help management understand their business better.  Another point that I want to reiterate is the improper use of the term reporting and the term analytics because they are vastly different, yet some many people use them interchangeably.

David, who pointed me to this video, asked me my thoughts on this product called NovaView by a company called Panorama.  What Panorama was able to do was integrate its technology with Google Spreadsheets.  Just by seeing the demo and checking out the web site, I am not really that impressed by the software.  The data visualization choices are limited and are candy coated just like almost every product on the market. 

What I did like about the product was that there is a free version that would accommodate roughly 90% of the users.  In the video, the interviewee says that this product is for the non-power users of Excel that need a better tool that is easy to use.  I happen to be in that power user category and know a little more than the average person about data visualization.  So my findings may not be in the majority.  Also, I did like the fact that a user can embed the visualization into a blog or web page, which can only be done in an image format with Excel.  This feature would allow people to interact with data versus just having it static.  Until I actually use the product, I can’t claim the speed of processing or ease of use.  I’m not sure it comes close to a product like Tableau, but it is free and integrated with Google.

It seems that many folks are figuring out much quicker what Microsoft is taking so long – the need to collaborate on spreadsheets and post on the web.

Here are some links to the company and its tools.

Panorama

NovaView Analytics

NovaView Dashboard

Google Gadget – Panorama

Thank you to David for the link!

What do you think?

In a post last week, I presented a flight patterns video from Aaron Koblin.  Hadley Wickam was kind enough to point me to the original flight pattern video, which is really impressive given that it was created 14 years ago.  Click on the image below, or here, to see the original flight pattern video.

There are a bunch of great videos spanning the last 30 years or so in the library section of the American Statistical Association website.  Here is a link to the video section. 

If you are interested in statistical computing and a little history, including PRIM-9, check out this page/video.  The video features: John Tukey and Jerome Freedman.

A special thank you goes to Hadley for his contribution on this post.  Hadley is an Assistant Professor at Rice University with a PhD in statistics from Iowa State University.  To learn more about Hadley and his contributions to statistics and data visualization, click here.

Source

Recently, CNET featured a video on Aaron Koblin whose name I had never heard before a few viral videos hit.  Aaron is an artist/designer/researcher focused on creating and visualizing human systems.  Many of Aaron’s visualizations are just stunning as you can see in the image above.  One of his most well-known works is the flight pattern simulation shown in the video below.  I have also included some other popular videos regarding Aaron.  Enjoy!

Flight Pattern Video

Sheep Video

Ten Thousand Cents

Radio Head – House of Cards

Check out the video on CNET by clicking on the image below.

To see Aaron’s portfolio, click here.

In the world of technology and software, since when does a release happen ahead of schedule?  Not often.  Well, WordPress has version 2.6 available for download about a month ahead of schedule.  The upgrade was pretty painless except for one minor issue.  For some reason, the maintenance mode plug-in needed to be deleted to run the upgrade from my browser.

This video describes the new features for WordPress 2.6.  One of the best new features is the image caption feature to help with citing sources or describing the image.

As with the last upgrade back in May, please let me know (using this form) if you find any bugs with this blog.  Who knows, there may just be a prize involved!

Related:

• To download WordPress 2.6 click here
• To get detailed upgrade instructions click here
• WordPress For Dummies, Lisa Sabin-Wilson at Amazon.com

This video is a little long, but Hans does an excellent job presenting statistical data.  It’s worth the time to watch, trust me.