I have to say, there is no shortage of data being provided during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Every day in Alberta at 3:30pm our Chief Medical Officer provides updates, including the number of new and recovered cases.  There are also Kaggle competitions trying to get people to build data models to better understand this virus and predict its spread.  Not to mention all the research going into its causes and creating a vaccine. And then there is my current favorite site – updated daily – and it includes geospatial information (including an interactive map), age group, and gender breakdowns. 

Data dashboards are probably one of the most common analytics tools used by companies and interestingly, they are not unlike your vehicle’s dashboard.  Think about that for a minute.  In your vehicle, you have a lot of important pieces of information directly in front of you that help you make decisions.

I think I can….​

I’ve recently been working on getting my Data Science Certificate from NAIT, which is a local polytechnic school.  In one of our classes our instructor gave us the Titanic competition from Kaggle to experience what an end-to-end machine learning project is like.  It has been frustrating, challenging, sometimes daunting, but yet super helpful.  Even now, a week after the class I am still working on my model trying to get the accuracy higher and improve my ranking on the Leaderboard.  And still wondering how on earth so many people got 100% accuracy?

When it comes to actually seeing the data – the patterns and what it actually means – there are two popular terms in data science right now: data visualization and data storytelling.

Data Science has become a massive buzz term in recent years.  In fact, being a Data Scientist was called the “Sexiest Job of the 21st Century” by the Harvard Business Review in 2012. But what does that mean and what does it exactly entail? 

In my last post on spreadsheet formatting, I discussed the importance of making data in a spreadsheet accessible to users by using some simple formatting techniques. In this post I will discuss no matter how well data is formatted, sometimes it just needs to be visualized.

Most people who have worked in an organization have, at one time or another, come across a spreadsheet. Perhaps you have been the author or merely a recipient, but spreadsheets are still a fairly common way to share data, information, or charts. Whether you are a Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel person, it is important to consider how your spreadsheet is formatted. If a spreadsheet is being shared, the formatting should also consider what the focus of the content is and how to structure the information to best convey this message.

Starting this site/blog wasn’t an easy decision for me. I’ve been doing some kind of data analysis going on 20 years now. I love numbers – you should know that about me. And believe it or not, lots of people don’t love numbers. Even worse, some people believe numbers and data can be twisted to suit their purpose. And that dichotomy has created some challenges for me. Nevertheless, I decided to start this blog to share my experiences, my knowledge, and maybe a bit of advice here and there.