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On April 19th, 2010, IATA, the chief trade group representing airlines, issued a press release which states in part: “IATA criticized Europe’s unique methodology of closing airspace based on theoretical modeling of the ash cloud. ‘This means that governments have not taken their responsibility to make clear decisions based on facts …’ said [Giovanni] Bisignani […]
Today’s shrinking resources may tempt us into rushing things along, yet we need to be careful when relying on graphics to make decisions. Good graphics make their point more quickly than a wall of text. On the other hand, poor graphics easily create the wrong impression. Distinguishing between the two is not as easy as […]
How often have we seen a graph in an opinion piece without knowing how it was created, but somewhere in the back of our mind we suspected that it was tweaked somehow to make a point? How can we ferret out “creative analytics” from the true story? Remember Mark Twain’s famous quote about […]
The viz below uses Tableau Public and allows visitors to explore differences in food consumption and food/soda taxes based on obesity rates in the US. Notice the dramatic differences in soft drink consumption among populations with different obesity rates. At first glance, it appears that cutting back on sodas is our best bet for reducing […]
Often we have to work with data without knowing all the details of how it was collected and processed. In those situations we first need to determine what information the data contains and what it can and cannot tell us. We need to ask questions of the data and determine whether it makes sense, […]
In order to make profitable decisions, we need good information. Whether we base our decisions on sales, customer perceptions or the number of widgets we shipped last month, our information comes from some system that collects and measures relevant data for us.
In my Six Sigma Black Belt class we recently discussed the challenges of developing […]
One can reasonably argue that processes don’t produce results, people do. In and of itself a process does nothing. It takes people to engage in a process – for better or for worse – to produce something. On the other hand are quality pioneers like Edwards Deming who says: “Eighty-five percent of the reasons […]
With the massive recall due to sudden acceleration problems, Toyota’s reputation for superior quality has suffered a black eye – if not more. The future will tell how serious this injury is and whether it represents the tip of an ominous iceberg. Sprinkled amongst the news coverage are hints that Toyota has known about accelerator […]
Recently, while working on input for a decision tree, I ran into a scenario that reminded me of the fact that we cannot improve a decision simply by applying a tool or technique. We also need good data.
Here is a hypothetical example: Let us assume we are a contractor who is evaluating a fixed bid […]
Ted Cuzzillo, the author behind the datadoodle blog, got me thinking about data details today. When do they matter and when do they distract from what matters?
Being a data analyst means that I love details: the more the better, so I can understand how they form the Big Picture. Intrinsically, I am drawn to graphs […]
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