Visual Analytics

2014 US growth forecasts of Business Intelligence vendors

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There are many ways of measuring the growth of business intelligence vendors. One approach of interest in the era of self-service analytics is to measure the growth in web search volume. Derived from web search volume data from Google, the following analyses can serve as a useful reference to understand which companies/products are growing in popularity and which may be falling out of favor.

The estimates in all of the following analyses are based on simple web search volume indices from the United States through the end of November, 2013. Using historic search volume data, forecasts were built for each company/product and growth rates for 2014 were derived from these forecasts.

I would group these companies into three categories
fast growers- Tableau, PowerPivot, Qlikview, BIRST and GoodData;
the growers- Spotfire and Microstrategy,
and mature products- Oracle BI, SAS, Cognos, SPSS, SQL Server, Actuate and Business Objects.

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Upcoming analytics courses, free webinars and articles
December 2013 newsletter

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Thanks for your interest in our newsletter, please forward it to colleagues that may benefit from it. Please join us for our upcoming webinar next Monday on common analytic issues and mistakes in Tableau 8.

Eileen and I are excited to share our new courses on Tableau, Microstrategy Analytics Desktop (a free alternative for visual analytics and dashboards), SAS programming and data exploration and visualization are all available for on-site instruction.

We are booking engagements with clients for on-site training and strategic consulting projects throughout Q1 and into Q2 of 2014, please let us know if we can help you in 2014!

Data Management and Visual Analytics with Tableau (2 days)
January 28th-29th, 2014—Chicago, Illinois
Everyone can benefit from learning a reliable, flexible and repeatable method to analyze real-world data. Combine this with a solid grounding in the flow and core features of Tableau to achieve great returns with this course. In just two days, you will complete multiple real-world case studies with Tableau paired with supporting data management capabilities of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.

Data Management and Visual Analytics with Microstrategy Analytics Desktop (2 days)
Microstrategy Analytics Desktop is an exciting new offering of Microstrategy, an established leader in business intelligence. Available as a free product for both personal and professional use, Freakalytics considers this new product a good alternative to other leading products in visual analytics and analytic dashboards. It is capable of working with local data sources such as Excel, text files and Access databases in addition to remote, big data sources such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and Hadoop.

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Eight common analytic issues and mistakes in Tableau 8

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Understand them, avoid them and correct them December 23rd, 2013 — 11 AM Central, Noon Eastern, 9 AM Pacific, 5 PM London Click here to register Synopsis In this webinar, Stephen reviews common shortcomings and misunderstandings that can prevent effective use of Tableau. These issues can result in misleading or just plain wrong answers being … Read more

Top News – Data, Data Warehousing, Analytics & BI

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November 11th, 2013
Stephen McDaniel
Chief Data Officer Advisor at Freakalytics, LLC

i5_2Finding it hard to make time to keep up with the rapidly changing world of data, data warehousing, analytics, data science, business intelligence and visual analytics?  We understand! Here’s our curated summary of relevant news that could help with your future data and analytic projects. We also add commentary on the topic, a summary of the article and the link to read the full article.

There are seven articles in this update:
     How Big Data Is Changing Science (and Society)
     Big data blues: The dangers of data mining
     2014 INFORMS Conference on the Business of Big Data
     Facebook System for Massive Big Data (Hadoop FS) Offered Free to World
     Paxata Launches Industry’s First Adaptive Data Preparation Platform
     C-Suite and Trust Both Affect Financial Returns on Analytics, Big Data
     Meeting a VAST challenge – Lincoln Laboratory staff create winning visualization
 
 
 
 
 
i6How Big Data Is Changing Science (and Society)

Traditional statistical approaches that long dominated scientific research are being challenged and augmented by new approaches from the fields of big data and data science.

HOW CAN YOU PREDICT something without understanding it? Simple:

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My experience with data analytics-Strata Conference

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Please join me at the Strata Conference/Hadoop World in New York next Tuesday, October 29th, as I talk about my years of experience with data analysis alongside the founders and executives of ClearStory Data. ClearStory Data is delivering a new solution that makes it simple for business users to find, combine and interactively analyze data … Read more

A brief history—Freakalytics and Tableau—since 2008

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Stephen and I are frequently asked the story of why we wrote the first book endorsed by Tableau Software and how we launched their original, in-person training program back in 2009. In fact, we have been asked about this so many times, I decided it would be worthwhile to share the details.

2008
Stephen first discovered Tableau Software while working at Netflix. He was so impressed with the visual analytic capabilities of the product that after working with it for a couple of years, he approached the executives at Tableau about writing the first book on Tableau, which was still a tiny company at the time. They were excited about the idea so we met with CEO Christian Chabot, CDO and Co-founder Chris Stolte and several other executives to discuss the book content.

July 2009
Stephen completed and published the first edition of Rapid Graphs with Tableau Software just in time for the Tableau Customer Conference in Seattle. Marc Rueter, now a Senior Director at Tableau and Technical Reviewer of the book, wrote

“A great work- this is going to be a much-loved book.”

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Free Tableau 8 e-book at the TCC Alteryx Pavilion!

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RGTS 8 Book Cover Front 1500Visit the Alteryx Pavilion at Tableau Customer Conference 2013 in Washington, DC next week to learn more about the value of Strategy Analytics and Alteryx for Visual Analytics.  Notably, attendees can pick up a complimentary USB key with Visual Analytics Best Practices including work by Freakalytics and the key even includes a preview of Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 and a coupon code for a free copy of the e-book! Note that you must redeem your code by September 18th, 2013.

This is the original guide to Tableau for The Accidental Analyst®.  Now in its fourth edition, this is the best-selling book on Tableau, trusted by thousands including many Tableau employees who learned Tableau from it- both before and after joining the company!  Back in 2009, Elissa Fink (CMO at Tableau) wrote about Rapid Graph with Tableau Software 5, “A must read for anyone interested in Tableau. Clear explanations, practical advice and beautiful examples!”  Just a few months ago, the Marketing team at Tableau ordered bulk copies of Rapid Graphs for their new customer acquisition program, reiterating their excitement over the four editions of this book!

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Free Access to Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8–Chapter 6

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Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 The Original Guide for the Accidental Analyst We are pleased to provide free access to our book for all site members. It is also available as a printed book on Amazon. The home page for this release is here. Read Chapter 6 (pages 97-118)      Take over with Tableau—View structure,           Marks … Read more

Free Access to Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8–Chapter 5

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Rapid Graphs with Tableau 8 The Original Guide for the Accidental Analyst We are pleased to provide free access to our book for all site members. It is also available as a printed book on Amazon. The home page for this release is here. Read Chapter 5 (pages 79-96)      Advanced view types in Tableau-79           Scatter … Read more