A Small Real-World Project for Learning Three Invaluable Data Science Skills As with most interesting projects, this one started with a simple question asked half-seriously: how much tuition do I pay for five minutes of my college president’s time? After a chance pleasant discussion with the president of my school (CWRU), I wondered just how much my conversation had cost me. My search led to this article, which along with my president’s salary, had this table…
The sunk-cost fallacy is one of many harmful cognitive biases to which humans fall prey. It refers to our tendency to continue to devote time and resources to a lost cause because we have already spent — sunk — so much time in the pursuit. The sunk-cost fallacy applies to staying in bad jobs longer than we should, slaving away at a project even when it’s clear it won’t work, and yes, continuing to use a tedious, outdated plotting…
The enterprise has been talking about Digital Transformation and Industry 4.0 for years. We have seen transformation accelerate and the adoption of artificial intelligence, connected devices, and even virtual reality speed-up over the last few months due to the pandemic. As enterprise digitization continues to be top of mind and data becomes even more critical in this process, we need to look at how all the data created can be better visualized to generate better…
Infographics have become an increasingly popular data visualization tool which enable users to quickly give an overview of pretty much any topic. They rely on using images to accompany bite-sized pieces of information, in keeping with the theory that our brains are better at storing and recalling images than words or numbers alone. Luckily thanks to their explosion in popularity there are a good number of affordable or even free tools to help even the…
What does data taste like? It’s probably not a question that’s crossed your mind, but data visualization experts Susanne Jaschko and Moritz Stefaner decided to ask — and answer — the question as a way to make their field more personal, emotional and relevant. Imagine a fish stew whose ingredients reflect the data about local fishing, a pizza topped to represent the population mix of Helsinki, or a selection of chocolates whose fillings represent the…
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Visualization can seem like an unlikely marriage. AI techniques often work as a black box: we cannot know how the AI has reached its conclusion. This can raise uncomfortable questions: think of a medical diagnosis, or the screening of job applicants: if we cannot see inside the black box, we can’t know whether the AI made a serious mistake, or reflected our implicit bias. When the AI becomes a veil…
Any great story means visualization and detail. It takes the small additions of those details to build a picture in someone’s mind to truly make the story complete. The same goes for analytics and data. These inclusions to our marketing strategies make it so that as marketers we can tell the stories that make for successful campaigns and customer journeys. However, interpreting all the data correctly and turning it into a great story can be an…
For data to be useful to humans, we have to be able to visualize it in a way that lets us understand the story it tells, and communicate it to others. Data visualization tools are constantly evolving to offer more powerful features while improving accessibility and user-friendliness. With an increasing number of job roles requiring us to present data to back up our decision-making, visualization tools are an increasingly important tool in our working lives. Today’s…
The U.S. student loan debt has now reached a staggering $1.6 trillion this year and continuing to grow, many college graduates worry that they may never be able to pay off their debt. Over 44 million Americans have student debt and the average graduate in the U.S. owes approximately $40,000 each. Recent pushes in politics have centered around the student debt crisis. Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill titled the “Student Loan Debt Relief Act of 2019.” The bill stated a…
Colors are an effective medium for communicating meaning. Some have certain implicit psychological associations. Red, for example, is often associated with power, love, and anger. Blue might convey coldness, calm, or logic, depending on the context. Different shades of a single primary color can convey vastly different meanings and emotions. Two or more colors together can have a profound effect on one another. They can be complimentary, or work in juxtaposition. In data visualization, color…
