“Data! Data! Data! I cannot make bricks without clay”
Sherlock Holmes - Youtube
Hi there!
It’s Kan from Exploratory.
It’s been a long time since the last update! There have been a lot of exciting stuff happening with Exploratory.
First, we delivered a few Data Science training programs (both off-line and on-line) in October and November and met a lot of great people who share the passion for data and analytics around the world. This training has been the greatest experience of my life, I’m constantly finding myself super inspired by those who joined our classes.
Second, we have finally released Exploratory v5.0! This is actually a great milestone for us to get closer to our vision, “Democratize Data Science”. We have learned a lot from our existing users and from people who joined our past training classes over the last two years and a half, and we put all the learnings into this release. I’m very proud of what the team has done with v5.0. Hope you’ll like it, too.
I’ll be hosting a webinar to introduce the new Exploratory v5.0 at 10 AM PT (US Pacific Time) / 1 PM ET (US Eastern Time) on this coming Thursday, November 15th.
If you’re Exploratory user make sure to join! (Yes, it will be recorded!)
Now, here’s this week’s update!
What We Are Reading
Why you should be data-informed and not data-driven - Link
‘Data Driven’ sounds cool as a marketing term, but I often see people who quickly react to what they see in Dashboard or charts, blindly get excited or upset about, and immediately try to do something about it, like calling a meeting for it. But it’s important to know that there is always variance in data so we need to separate a signal from noise. Also, what you see might lack context or enough data so critical thinking is very important.
This blog post from Uzma Barlaskar from Facebook explains the difference between Data Driven and Data Informed with examples very well. Anyone who is interested in using data to make better decisions should take a look.
How data analysis helps football clubs make better signings - Link
We are seeing many industries being transformed by data science, and sports are one big example of such transformation. Here’s a post from Financial Times on how Soccer (Football) is also going through such transformation.
Study: Google is the biggest beneficiary of the GDPR - Link
Well, it turned out GDPR has been benefiting the giants from which it was meant to protect citizens. This is an EU’s own goal, they are killing European adtech companies. I’m not endorsing any adtech companies, but this is the latest example of a government regulation that ended up helping big companies monopolize the market and making it harder for smaller or new startups to get into the market.
Making a metric - Link
Any data stories face a huge challenge of collecting and transforming data. Here is an interesting story from Economist on how they collected the data for visualizing the ratio of CEO pay to median employee pay through various forms of financial reports.
Wall Street Analysts Are Now Selling More Data, Less Analysis - Link
Research units of the banks such as Goldman Sachs, UBS, etc. are more focusing more on sharing data than sending out their analysis reports because their clients don’t even open such reports!
The analytical capability has moved to the hands of the clients, now those banks are responding by collecting ‘alternative’ data and refine it to be usable via API. This is one of the areas people are constantly innovating in terms of how to use data. Very interesting.
What We Are Writing
We have written the following post recently!
What We Are Working On
Exploratory v5.0
We have just finished the latest Data Science Booster training. It was a lot of fun and meeting super interesting new people is just an amazing experience. We have been using Exploratory v5.0 for the last few training programs, and I have to say it’s been pretty smooth. I just love teaching with v5.0, which makes the overall experience much easier and simpler! ;)
Exploratory v5.1
Having said that, we have a few important leftover features from v5.0, which we started working on during the v5.0 development time but couldn’t make it to the release due to the quality issues. Such features are Parameterized Dashboard / Note (and Slides), Data Source Switch, Branch Root Step Switch, etc.
We are currently working on such features along with other enhancements / bug fixes, and planning to deliver them as part of v5.1, which is due in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
Exploratory Online Seminar
As mentioned at the beginning, we’re going to do a webinar at 10 AM PT (US Pacific Time) / 1 PM ET (US Eastern Time) on this coming Thursday, November 15th and I’ll be presenting Exploratory v5.0.
If you’re Exploratory user make sure to join! (Yes, it will be recorded!)
Data Science Booster Training
Our next online Data Science Booster training will be in February 2019! If you are interested in learning Data Science without programming, make sure to sign up soon! There are an early bird and a student discount!
Enroll February Booster Training!
If you are a current student, click here to get the student discount.
That’s it for this week.
Have a wonderful week!
Kan CEO/Exploratory
This is a weekly email update of what I have seen in Data Science / AI and thought were interesting, plus what Team Exploratory is working on.