The Analytics Power Hour

Remember when you used to keep all of your data packed into data boxes and stacked up on a bunch of data shelves in your state-of-the-art data warehouse? Well, it might be time to fire up the data forklift and haul all of those boxes out of the structured order of your data warehouse and dump them into a data lake so that it can float and sink and swim around in semi-structured and unstructured waters. On this episode, Rohan Dhupelia joins the gang to talk about his thoughts and experiences from engineering just that sort of move at Atlassian. So, pop in your earbuds and strap on your data swim trunks and give it a listen!

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

To think, it was barely-considered subtle humor that we used two trailing zeros in episode #001. But, despite our best efforts to destroy our reputations or our livers long before we centupled that original episode, we failed on both fronts, and we now need that third significant digit! For this special episode, we invited listener questions, and our listeners responded. Some of them blew right past the time limit on their questions, but that's okay: we blew (slightly) past the one hour mark for the show.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Are you deeply knowledgable in JavaScript, R, the DOM, Python, AWS, jQuery, Google Cloud Platform, and SQL? Good for you! If you're not, should you be? What does "technical" mean, anyway? And, is it even possible for an analyst to dive into all of these different areas? English philosophy expert The Notorious C.M.O. (aka, Simo Ahava) returns to the show to share his thoughts on the subject in this episode.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

As the axiom goes: people don't leave companies; they leave their managers. And, good analysts are constantly being approached with new opportunities. So, what's the secret formula for hanging on to analytics talent? Assuming simply chaining them to their desks isn't an option, then the trick is keeping them happy and motivated. On this episode, the gang discusses their experiences and perspectives on the topic. Tim tried to quit the show just before recording, but he then discovered that Michael had chained him to his desk.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Tell me about a time you produced an amazing analysis. Please provide your response in the form of a Jupyter notebook that uses Python or R (or both!) to pull words from a corpus that contains all words in the OED stored in a BigQuery table. I mean, that's a fair question to ask, right? No? Well, what questions and techniques are effective for assessing an analyst's likelihood of succeeding in your organization? How should those techniques differ when looking for a technical analyst as opposed to a more business-oriented one? On this episode of the show -- recorded while our recording service clearly thought it was in a job interview that it needed to deliberately tank -- Simon Rumble from Snowflake Analytics joined the gang to share ideas on the topic.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Mama always said: life is like a box of chocolates, and online learning is sometimes like one of those boxes where you don't know which piece is delicious nougat and which piece is some sort of nasty, coconut-y cream. Well, maybe not your mama. But, it's a big world, so, surely, there's a mother out there somewhere who would agree with the sentiment. On this episode, the gang chatted with Google Consumer Insights Analyst Lizzie Allen-Klein about different learning styles and different approaches and options for learning new (and hard!) analytical skills. And there might have been an embarrassing interlude where Tim and Michael exhibited their respective possession of some Y-chromosomes.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

For this mini-episode, Tim sits down (virtually) with Episode #077 guest Jodi Daniels from Red Clover Advisors to chat about the world of privacy post-May 25, 2018 (GDPR), as well as the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA). Has the free-wheeling world of free-flowing consumer data ended, or are companies simply learning how to behave with more care? Give it a listen to find out?

Business Intelligence. It's a term that's been around for a few decades, but that is every bit as difficult to nail down as "data science," "big data," or a jellyfish. Think too hard about it, and you might actually find yourself struggling to define "analytics!" With the latest generation of BI tools, though, it's a topic that is making the rounds at cocktail parties the world over! (Cocktail parties just aren't what they used to be.) On this episode, the crew snags Taylor Udell from Heap to join in a discussion on the subject, and Moe (unsuccessfully) attempts to end the episode after six minutes. Possibly because neither Tableau nor Superset can definitively prove where avocado toast originated (but Wikipedia backs her up). But we all know Tim can't be shut up that quickly, right?!

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

The company: "Hey, you. That's a mighty nice test you've run. We should be doing that a lot more of those." You: "Um...okay. But, I'm only one person." In this episode, the gang chats with Pinterest's Andrea Burbank (Twitter | Pinterest) about how she (loosely) dealt with this scenario: from sheer force of will to get some early wins to strategic thinking combined with late nights, an obsession with checklists, and a willingness to be flexible as she slowly, but firmly, pushed the organization to steadily increasing test volume and test reliability. And sweet potato gnocchi.

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.

Humans are creatures of habit. And analysts — those of us who haven't been so drawn into the world of artificial intelligence that we have become cyborgs, at least — are humans. In this episode, the gang explores the good and the bad side of analytical habits: what analyses we gravitate towards, how we go about approaching those analyses, and, to some extent, how those habits are impacted by our organizational environments. With a side dish of, "What is a data scientist, anyway?" (because who can resist a question that is both rhetorical AND controversial?!).

For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the show page.