Articles by Lindy Ryan
Empowering every data user starts with reassessing how we think people work with data. Too often, we think "data professionals" but hear "data scientists," "business analysts," and "power users."
Posted May 26, 2021
As the world of data analytics continues to evolve and reshape after a tumultuous 2020, the need for agility is rapidly driving a new era in data culture in which it is imperative to handle data immediately and at scale. While emphasis on self-service data and analytics has been top-of-mind for some time now, the shift to self-sufficiency is held back by culture, not technology. With the new year pushing more robotics process automation at all levels of the business—and for all data users—organizations are becoming more acutely aware that true enablement isn't just about tools and tech. It's about people.
Posted April 05, 2021
As business analytics education, including specific instruction in data visualization, becomes more solidified in higher education, the question is not: "Are we teaching business analytics?" but instead becomes: "What are we teaching in business analytics?" To make education most valuable, it should align with what the market is looking for in potential job candidates.
Posted September 26, 2019
Data visualization is often described as part art and part science, and it's true: Visual design and information representation are separate yet highly interrelated concepts that, together, create meaning visually from data. Applied in data visualization, these elements leverage our brain's cognitive functions to help us better see and understand information, and to interact with, learn from, and reach new insights in our data.
Posted May 16, 2019
Good data visualization should be fast, informative, and—above all—valuable. This makes data viz a critical tool in the modern analyst toolkit. Here are 3 simple questions to ensure your data visualization passes the eye candy test.
Posted March 06, 2019
Today, there is a resurgence in the power of data visualization—alongside a virtual gold rush of bigger, more diverse, and more dynamic data—is providing new tools and innovative techniques to help us transform raw data into compelling visual data narratives. Propelled by this newfound horsepower in data visualization, we are recreating the entire analytic process. We're also making it increasingly more visual—from how we explore data to discover new insights all the way to how we curate dashboards, storyboards, and interactive visualizations to share the fruits of our labor.
Posted July 16, 2018
Across industry and academia, the past several years have seen a proverbial explosion of new business analytics education programs.If you're new to the analytics labor market—or looking to advance your credentials—academia has likewise undergone a period of massive innovation as educators work diligently to keep pace with market demands and produce a new breed of business analytics education. The change has been nothing short of astonishing
Posted May 11, 2018
There is a data revolution happening across the globe. From academics to politics, and everywhere in between, the world's stories are being told through their datapoints. And, while using visualization to tell stories about data is by no means new, we are now telling them in more influential and impactful ways than ever before. Charts and graphs created 5 years ago in Excel are far different than the incredible visuals we are now producing with best-of-breed tools such as Tableau, or scripting with dynamic JavaScript libraries such as D3.js
Posted March 26, 2018
When it comes to visualizing data, there is no shortage of charts and graphs to choose from. From traditional graphs to innovative hand-coded visualizations, there is a continuum of visualizations ready to translate data from numbers into meaning using shapes, colors, and other visual cues. However, each visualization type is intended to show different types of data in specific ways to best represent its insight. Let's look at five of the most common visualization types to help you choose the right chart for your da
Posted September 20, 2017
Organizations are embracing data visualization as more than a tool to "see" trends and patterns in data but as a pathway to a dynamic culture of visual data discovery. As with any type of cultural shift, there are going to be a few bumps along the road as innovative ways to transform data into actionable insights through the power of data visualization are sought.However, with a few considerations kept top-of-mind in the early stages of data visualization adoption, common problems can be avoided.
Posted May 15, 2017
By now we are all in agreement: The business of data is changing. Business users are more empowered to work with data; IT is becoming less about control and more about enablement. New data science job descriptions—such as the data scientist—are springing up as companies everywhere look for the right people with the right skill sets to squeeze more value from their data. Data itself is getting bigger, hardware more economical, and analytical software more "self-service." We've embraced the paradigm shift from traditional BI to iterative data discovery. It's a new era.
Posted April 07, 2017
The definition of "data visualization" often varies depending on whom you ask. For some, it's a process of visually transforming data for exploration or analysis. For others, it's a tool to share analytical insights or invite discovery.
Posted November 15, 2016
5 Steps to Visual Data Storytelling to Make Data Easier to Understand
Posted June 07, 2016
Thanks to the digital business transformation, the world around us is changing—and quickly—to a very consumer- and data-centric economy, where companies must transform to remain competitive and survive. The upshot is that for many companies today, it is a full-on Darwinian experience of survival of the fittest.
Posted April 08, 2016
As data visualization increasingly becomes top-of-mind for data-driven organizations, it's time to introduce the concept of data visualization competency. There is a need today to provide a framework to fingerprint data visualizations as unique digital assets in the business for maximum impact and consistent execution against strategic business practices and goals.
Posted April 01, 2016
Not too long ago, large volumes of information were available only to the select few organizations able to afford the expensive IT infrastructure to collect, store, manage, and analyze it—the big-budget companies with seemingly bottomless pockets, or the professional research services that built empires on collecting and interpreting data. But now, through the realized effects of Moore's law, along with the consumerization of BI tools, this data is increasingly available to everyone—and without having to dig deep into budgets or employ robust IT departments.
Posted November 13, 2015
Data-driven companies continue to explore data management technologies that better unify operational, analytical, and other disparate or siloed data in a way that offers tangible business value and data management relief.
Posted May 19, 2015
The Role of Friction in Data Discovery
Posted April 08, 2015
How to Become a Data-Centric Company
Posted April 04, 2014