As if the iPhone 4 has done enough to change our world – well it has done everything from re-inventing the internet, computing, telephony and the way I make my lunch and now it has re-invented the pie chart too.
We had some performance issues that were coming up in a particular part of our code with a large number of clients/users. After analyzing the code a number of optimizations were made to hopefully improve the situation.
To test the improvements we used Yellowfin to chart the before and after.
There are times when a graphic embedded in a table adds a significant amount of usability to a report. Whist the guru’s in the data visualization space may argue that you do not want to clutter your tables we found a great example of when a graphic makes interpretation of your data easier.
I came across an interesting article in the WSJ that discussed the role of language and its influence on the way people see the world. The argument being that language effects our perceptions and interactions. An extreme example quoted was “The Piraha, a tribe in the Amazon in Brazil, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.”
The humble spreadsheet certainly has a big part to play in reporting and data analysis. After all it would be difficult to find an organization that does not use excel reporting at all. Thinking about this phenomenon and agile BI led me to a few conclusions.
If we think about agile Business Intelligence as the capacity to rapidly create and distribute your data analysis then we need to factor in the use of spreadsheets as a data collection tool.
