Freakalytics

Here is my response to Nathan’s article, “Business intelligence vs. infotainment“, on Flowing Data.  Nathan’s article was in response to Stephen’s earlier article on Perceptual Edge, “Teradata, David McCandless, and yet another detour for analytics“.

We should leave “playing doctor” to the children

In considering this great debate, perhaps we should step back and consider another field, medicine.  For centuries, medicine was guided by wishes, fantasy and misguided ideas of what would heal people.  One of my favorite examples is “trephining” (drilling holes in your head) to release the evil spirits that have made the patient ill.  Of course, for a very small percent of patients, this proved helpful.  However, most ended up no better and typically much worse for their procedure.

I feel that McCandless work is “fun” and vibrant, but

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I was very interested to read the survey results from MIT about data access challenges facing business analysts. The article states that “The New Intelligent Enterprise… will allow you to do some immediate benchmarking – and see how your organization is doing in relation to your peers.” While I am certain the data from this survey can indeed be useful in meeting their objective, I am also certain that their initial chart selection makes this difficult to easily see and understand.

In an effort to demonstrate how they can make their upcoming report much more informative

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LinkedIn, undervalued and underloved?

After examination of the data against peers, I believe LinkedIn is priced for great growth potential in the coming years. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an IPO and they can be very volatile. However, I prefer to make my investments in companies based on long-term outlook rather than speculate on short-term trading gains.

It is estimated that LinkedIn (NYSE: LNKD) will price at $42-$45 per share tomorrow, valuing the company at $4.1B which implies approximately 94.5M shares in float. Based on revenue over the past 4 quarters, this values LinkedIn at 14.1 times revenue (Price/Sales).

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A complimentary preview of the 1st two chapters, the table of contents and the book index is available for download here.

NOTE- the book is now available at Amazon, after correcting logistical issues.

Rapid Graphs with Tableau Software 6 is now available for purchase on Amazon in print and in e-book format for Kindle readers – on the Kindle device, PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone! Note that the print version has slightly better layout and readability due to the graphic-intensive nature of this book and the automated layout of e-book readers. This e-book is published in color for Kindle users on the PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone. Kindle device readers may have difficulty interpreting some of the graphs due to the native black and white reading experience.

This update from the 1st version of the book required changes across nearly every page and significantly expanded the size of the book with coverage of many new features added- both from Tableau 6 and earlier releases. Other additions include an index and expanded examples in several chapters.

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