Cookies help us display personalized product recommendations and ensure you have great shopping experience.

By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
  • Analytics
    AnalyticsShow More
    big data analytics in transporation
    Turning Data Into Decisions: How Analytics Improves Transportation Strategy
    3 Min Read
    sales and data analytics
    How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
    9 Min Read
    data analytics and truck accident claims
    How Data Analytics Reduces Truck Accidents and Speeds Up Claims
    7 Min Read
    predictive analytics for interior designers
    Interior Designers Boost Profits with Predictive Analytics
    8 Min Read
    image fx (67)
    Improving LinkedIn Ad Strategies with Data Analytics
    9 Min Read
  • Big Data
  • BI
  • Exclusive
  • IT
  • Marketing
  • Software
Search
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Answering the real questions in data analysis
Share
Notification
Font ResizerAa
SmartData CollectiveSmartData Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • About
  • Help
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-23 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
SmartData Collective > Big Data > Data Visualization > Answering the real questions in data analysis
Data Visualization

Answering the real questions in data analysis

TedCuzzillo
TedCuzzillo
4 Min Read
SHARE

A guy walks into your cube and asks you to whip up an econometric model. You’re a statistician, after all, and you’ve got a Ph.D. in something or other. You do this for lunch, he figures.

He “over-thought,” says the one whose cube such a guy walked into. Theresa Doyon has been routinely navigating datasets in the 50 to 300 million-unit range for 10 years. She’s good at all-terrain tools like SAS and KXEN. She could have produced the report he wanted. Instead, she asked him, “Why?”

A guy walks into your cube and asks you to whip up an econometric model. You’re a statistician, after all, and you’ve got a Ph.D. in something or other. You do this for lunch, he figures.

More Read

Hadoop in retail
5 Common Use Cases for Hadoop in Retail
Because it’s Friday: Gravity Wells
Lyza and Tableau according to Mako
Scoring data in ADAPA via web services using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)
Social Data: The Arteries of the World, in Tweets

He “over-thought,” says the one whose cube such a guy walked into. Theresa Doyon has been routinely navigating datasets in the 50 to 300 million-unit range for 10 years. She’s good at all-terrain tools like SAS and KXEN. She could have produced the report he wanted. Instead, she asked him, “Why?”

They talked for an hour. What he actually needed, she discovered, was more of a descriptive report — something that gives a picture of a current situation. All he wanted to do was figure out how to allocate resources.

This is where things usually go wrong. “We’ve got all these great tools,” she says, “but I don’t see us using them as well as we could.” We could write this off as a communication problem, but she believes it’s much more than that.

It’s something like a man who walks into a kitchen with a carton of eggs and tells the cook to fry them all — when actually he’s just hungry and happened to have found eggs. Something else might suit him better. Bacon?

Business people complain that they get reports, not insights. But they’re not sure how to ask for the data. Meanwhile, analysts complain that they’re asked for a fire hose of analysis and that it’s always due yesterday. But they deliver. Asked for a report, they produce a report. Asked for a model, they produce a model.

“But that’s not what the business people really want,” says Theresa. ‘What they really want is to answer some sort of business question, like how’s my marketing doing? What can I do differently?”

“If you had a strategy and you did bite-size tests and learned as you go,” she says, “you could start to use the analytics that would really drive the insight.” We can really improve the way things are done. That’s the missing link.

At least some organizations have found that link. A home furnishings retailer she worked with recently had her work closely with marketing people as their questions and her analysis evolved.

The retailer had been suffering as ever more of its customers feared they’d soon lose their homes. The living room sets that looked so good just months before seemed to lose their appeal. Theresa’s assignment was to, in effect, come up with a silver lining.

“It was a very big and ambiguous question,” she recalls. She worked with the client on a series of projects over nearly two years as the sour economy evolved. She estimated opportunities, customer targets, and gave the marketing people she worked with critical guidance on the launch of new programs. She recalls, “It came out quite well.”

See her LinkedIn page here.

TAGGED:reporting
Share This Article
Facebook Pinterest LinkedIn
Share

Follow us on Facebook

Latest News

big data analytics in transporation
Turning Data Into Decisions: How Analytics Improves Transportation Strategy
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
AI and fund manager software
AI And The Acceleration Of Information Flows From Fund Managers To Investors
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive
sales and data analytics
How Data Analytics Improves Lead Management and Sales Results
Analytics Big Data Exclusive
ai in marketing
How AI and Smart Platforms Improve Email Marketing
Artificial Intelligence Exclusive Marketing

Stay Connected

1.2kFollowersLike
33.7kFollowersFollow
222FollowersPin

You Might also Like

IBM’s 2013 Vision Bodes Well for Finance

13 Min Read

Denver Broncos and Olympians Go Digital

4 Min Read

Why Use Reporting Repositories for Business Intelligence?

6 Min Read

Analytics In A Global Recession: Fixed Price Operational Dashboard

2 Min Read

SmartData Collective is one of the largest & trusted community covering technical content about Big Data, BI, Cloud, Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, IoT & more.

data-driven web design
5 Great Tips for Using Data Analytics for Website UX
Big Data
ai in ecommerce
Artificial Intelligence for eCommerce: A Closer Look
Artificial Intelligence

Quick Link

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Follow US
© 2008-25 SmartData Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Go to mobile version
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?