The previous post in this space questioned if open data would make for better public policy. There are causes for optimism. Further to that, the City of Toronto just launched its wellbeing map, based on that open data. You can find it here. Explore.
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There’s a pretty big movement afoot in Canada. It’s called the open data movement and several levels of government are getting on board. It’s the movement for governments to make large datasets freely available to the public. It’s pretty rough going right now. I’m reading reports that the sets frequently lack a data dictionary and suffer from some pretty bad accessibility issues. The early efforts are to be commended. I’ve spoken to several government statisticians who are both excited and frustrated by what they’re able to share with the public, and where they’re totally blocked. They’re bullish on this movement. These pains in the public sector mirror those in the private sector. Will open data cause better public policy, and[…]
Jim Novo is right about the relevance of financial data to marketers. There’s a wealth of information in those transactional records, and most companies don’t have analytics practitioners embedded within those departments. Just as reporting (reportage) isn’t analytics, accounting isn’t analytics. There’s something to be said about the parallels between finance and analytics. Both have prediction, definitions, jargon, simulation, machine learning, ratios, rules, laws, and statistics. Both become confused with bookkeeping and dashboarding. One is older than the other. If accounting/finance is an 110 year old, marketing analytics is 18. There are very specific rules in bookkeeping, handed down for centuries. There are very specific standards in finance, handed down since at least the Renaissance. Should we be so lucky[…]
Some excellent work by Jerod Santo and his Hacker News Trend visualizer. Pretty sweet. Hacker News is a nice, social curation program. It’s a pretty good indicator of what data developers and hackers are thinking and doing in many markets. It’s one of the main bellwethers of the bootstrap community, and there’s typically a lot of content that I find interesting. All trend lines that follow are adjusted for size of community at the time. The first chart, below, describes the persistence of analytics and the rise of specific, applied uses – the a/b test. It also shows that the term ‘data science’, as a category of interest, had a bit of a bubble in late 2009. That’s great, but[…]
Analytics at the marketing / technology interface. What a jam. On the one side, there are massive time constraints on developers who struggle with super tight deadlines and last minute tweakings. On the other side, you have marketers who are buffeted by super tight deadlines, little time to plan, and tend to follow an anchor-and-adjust mentality. (Don’t we all?). Much of the frustration within analytics derives from watching both sides of the equation, and actively attempting to collaborate between two groups. I can sum up the fight between the two as: Marketer: “You go too slow!”IT: “You tell us about a project at the last minute!”Marketer: “You’re too slow!!!”IT: “You don’t know how to make choices!”Marketer: “You’re too slow!!!”Analytics: “Guys,[…]
Ketchup, in North America, generally comes in one flavor. It’s that familiar sugary taste with a hint of what is supposedly tomato. It doesn’t really taste like a tomato though. It’s different elsewhere, like in Germany, where it seems to be more juicy. But in North America, there’s one generally accepted flavor. People know what they’re getting with ketchup. They know how much a bottle of it will cost at the costco, the grocery store, or the convenience store. They have a firm idea of what to expect. It’s ketchup. There’s a general expectation around ketchup. That’s is clean and easy to use. Most of the time it comes in those squeezy bottles, an advancement in usability that has been[…]
http://correlate.googlelabs.com/
If we put as much effort into understanding and optimizing the factors in a strategy as we did into tactical optimization, we’d probably be four or five times more effective. Why? Tactical testing and analysis, when done well and right, can yield returns of approximately 2% to 20%. In certain industries, like airlines and travel arbitrage, the profit margin is made up entirely on tactical testing and optimization. Revenue management, logistics, and competing on analytics is simply the norm. Compete or die. So I’m not knocking tactical analytics. In most instances, however, companies do not have to compete using analytics. That is to say, most companies do not see analytics as a key factor in their strategies. Most companies certainly[…]
You’re invited to #WAWTO on June 22. Success would be several analysts, developers, marketers, data miners and creatives/artists coming out to engage and connect. Check out the invite below because it’s going to be a fascinating and fun meetup: http://www.meetup.com/WebAnalyticsWednesday/events/17841071/ The thesis question for the night is: “Does anyone give a shit about your dumb idea?“, first posed by David Cancel on his Data Driven Startup blog. And to help answer that, one of the best innovators, bootstrapper, and scientists I know, Joseph Carrabis, will be on hand to present solutions, pose problems, and answer your questions. Like any collective community, we’re long on ideas (good), long on realism (okay), and a bit shorter on testing (not as good). So[…]
The Economist Style Guide is a good reference for communicating insights. It’s the easiest style guide for our industry. A few favourite highlights: “Short words Use them. They are often Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin in origin. They are easy to spell and easy to understand. Thus prefer about to approximately, after to following, let to permit, but to however, use to utilise, make to manufacture, plant to facility, take part to participate, set up to establish, enough to sufficient, show to demonstrate and so on. Underdeveloped countries are often better described as poor. Substantive often means real or big. “Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.” (Winston Churchill)“ “Active, not passive Be direct.[…]