Visualization guru and data-industry skeptic Stephen Few in has a worthwhile review of Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.
… Read more...Data can be used in harmful ways. This fact has become magnified to an extreme in the so-called realm of Big Data, fueled by an indiscriminate trust in information technologies, a reliance on fallacious correlations, and an effort to gain efficiencies no matter the cost in human suffering.
Someone introduced himself recently as a “data scientist” to a data warehouse pro I know. “I thought he was a fool,” said Interworks consultant Tim Costello. He says it’s a meaningless term — and I believe it’s another one of those distractions thrown around in a roiling industry.… Read more...
A remarkable thing happened in Big Data last week. One of Big Data’s best friends poked fun at one of its icons: the Three V’s.
The well-networked and alert observer Shawn Rogers, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates, tweeted his eight V’s: “…Vast, Volumes of Vigorously, Verified, Vexingly Variable Verbose yet Valuable Visualized high Velocity Data.”
He was quick to explain to me that this is no comment on Gartner analyst Doug Laney’s three-V definition.… Read more...
As Stephen Few delivered his keynote address at the recent Tableau customer conference in Seattle, he suddenly broke his rhythm to look at someone in the audience. “Is that Howard Dresner?” he wondered, surprised.
It was. Howard is the man who as a Gartner analyst in 1989 revived the term “business intelligence,” and he’s one of the industry’s patriarchs.… Read more...
Some of the books Stephen Few reviews may at first glance to have little to do with data analysis. On second glance, though, they have everything to do with it. He often goes into the essence of thinking, insight, and decision making — core knowledge for BI practitioners.… Read more...