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The Analytics Power Hour

Michael Helbling, Moe Kiss, Tim Wilson, Val Kroll, and Julie Hoyer

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Attend any conference for any topic and you will hear people saying after that the best and most informative discussions happened in the bar after the show. Read any business magazine and you will find an article saying something along the lines of "Business Analytics is the hottest job category out there, and there is a significant lack of people, process and best practice." In this case the conference was eMetrics, the bar was….multiple, and the attendees were Michael Helbling, Tim Wilson ...
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From running a controlled experiment to running a linear regression. From eyeballing a line chart to calculating the correlation of first differences. From performing a cluster analysis because that’s what the business partner asked for to gently probing for details on the underlying business question before agreeing to an approach. There are count…
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You know you’ve arrived as a broadcast presence when you open up the phone lines and get your first, "Long time listener, first time caller" person dialing in. Apparently, we have not yet arrived, because no one opened with that when they sent in their questions for this show. Our question is: why not?! Alas! That is a question not answered on this…
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In order to produce a stellar analysis, have you ever requested a team to teardown a Tesla and count every last washer and battery cell? No? Well our guest this week, Jason DeRise, joined Tim, Julie, and Val to share that story and others on how alternative data can be used to enrich analyses. Luckily you don’t have to have a Wall Street-sized budg…
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It happens occasionally. Someone in the business decides they need to just take the analysis into their own hands. That leaves the analyst conflicted — love the interest and enthusiasm, but cringe at the risk of misuse or misinterpretation. Occasionally (rarely!), though, such a person goes so deep that they come out the other side having internali…
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Data communities have played a major role in the careers of many analysts, but times they are a-changin'. We're not sure if we're different, if the communities' purposes and missions have shifted, or both. One thing we are confident in, though, is that Pedram Navid was absolutely the right guest to invite on to the show to explore the topic alongsi…
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Long-time listeners to this show know that its origin and inspiration was the lobby bar of analytics conferences—the place where analysts casually gather to unwind after a day of slides interspersed with between-session conversations initiated awkwardly and then ended abruptly when the next session begins. Of the many conferences where this occurs,…
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As a general rule, analysts are drawn to precision: let's understand the business problem and then go figure out how the data can be acquired and crunched to provide something specific and useful. Fair enough. Where, then, do pencil and paper and 10-second sketches fit in? Or hastily and collaboratively drawn flippy chart or whiteboard sketches? We…
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They say an analysis is only as good as the question that was asked, so for our 2024 International Women's Day Episode, Julie, Moe, and Val were joined by Taylor Buonocore Guthrie to discuss how to ask better questions. Every analyst is naturally curious, but the thoughtfulness that Taylor puts into what type of questions to ask, how to ask them, a…
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Is it just us, or does it seem like we're going to need to start plotting the pace of change in the world of analytics on a logarithmic scale? The evolution of the space is exciting, but it can also be a bit dizzying. And intimidating! There's so much to learn, and there are only so many hours in a day! Why did we choose that [insert totally unrela…
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The data has problems. It ALWAYS has problems. Sometimes they're longstanding and well-documented issues that the analyst deeply understands but that regularly trip up business partners. Sometimes they're unexpected interruptions in the data flowing through a complex tech stack. Sometimes they're a dashboard that needs to have its logic tweaked whe…
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The backlog of data requests keeps growing. The dashboards are looking like they might collapse under their own weight as they keep getting loaded with more and more data requested by the business. You're taking in requests from the business as efficiently as you can, but it just never ends, and it doesn't feel like you're delivering meaningful bus…
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Aptiv, Baidu, Cerebras, Dataiku… we could keep going… and going… and going. If you know what this list is composed of (nerd), then you probably have some appreciation for how complex and fast moving the AI landscape is today. It would be impossible for a mere human to stay on top of it all, right? Wrong! Our guest on this episode, Matthew Lynley, d…
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For those who celebrate or acknowledge it, Christmas is now in the rearview mirror. Father Time has a beard that reaches down to his toes, and he’s ready to hand over the clock to an absolutely adorable little Baby Time when 2024 rolls in. That means it’s time for our annual set of reflections on the analytics and data science industry. Somehow, th…
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It would be a fool's errand to try to list out every expectation for an analyst's role, but where should you draw the line? How specific do you need to be? And how can you document the unspoken expectations without stepping into micromanagement? Tim, Moe, and Julie took a run at hashing these questions out in our most recent episode so you don't ha…
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To mentor, or not to mentor, that is the question: whether 'tis more productive to hole up in a cubicle and toil away without counsel, or to hold close one's experience to the benefit of no one else. Perchance, the author of this show summary should have checked with one of his mentors before attempting a Shakespearian angle. But, he didn't, and th…
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It's been said that, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes, so why is it so hard to communicate uncertainty to stakeholders when delivering an analysis? Many stakeholders think an analysis is intended to deliver an absolute truth; that if they have just enough data, a smart analyst, and some fancy techniques, that the decision th…
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Have you ever noticed that recipes that include estimates of how long it will take to prepare the dish seem to dramatically underestimate reality? We have! And that’s for something that is extremely knowable and formulaic — measure, mix, and cook a fixed set of ingredients! When it comes to analytics projects, when you don't know the state of the d…
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Seemingly straightforward data sets are seldom as simple as they initially appear. And, many an analysis has been tripped up by erroneous assumptions about either the data itself or about the business context in which that data exists. On this episode, Michael, Val, and Tim sat down with Viyaleta Apgar, Senior Manager of Analytics Solutions at Inde…
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Most of the time, we think of analytics as taking historical data for a business, munging it in various ways, and then using the results of that munging to make decisions. But, what if the business has no (or very little) historical data… because it's a startup? That's the situation venture capitalists — especially those focused on early stage star…
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It's a lot of work to produce each episode of this show, so we were pretty sure that, by this time, we would have just turned the whole kit and kaboodle over to AI. Alas! It seems like the critical thinking and curiosity and mixing of different personalities in a discussion are safely human tasks… for now. Dr. Brandeis Marshall joined Michael, Juli…
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One of the biggest challenges for the analyst or data scientist is figuring out just how wide and just how deep to go with stakeholders when it comes to key (but, often, complicated) concepts that underpin the work that's being delivered to them. Tell them too little, and they may overinterpret or misinterpret what's been presented. Tell them too m…
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We were curious about… curiosity. We know it's a critical trait for analysts, but is it an innate characteristic, a teachable skill, or some combination of both? We were curious. How can the breadth and depth of a candidate's curiosity be assessed as part of the interview process? We were curious. Who could we kick these questions (and others) arou…
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This topic was such a big deal that we managed to have no guests, and yet we had five people on the mic! Why? Because this episode doubles as a marker of a shift in the show itself. Beyond that, though, we had a lively discussion about how every business stakeholder professes to being committed to being data driven. That should make every stakehold…
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On the one hand, analysts generally know and accept that part of their responsibility is to not only conduct analyses, but to effectively communicate the results of those analyses to their stakeholders. On the other hand, "communication" can feel like a pretty squishy and nebulous skill. On this episode, Michael, Moe, and Tim tackled that nebulosit…
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To trust something, you need to understand it. And, to understand something, someone often has to explain it. When it comes to AI, explainability can be a real challenge (definitionally, a "black box" is unexplainable)! With AI getting new levels of press and prominence thanks to the explosion of generative AI platforms, the need for explainability…
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