When you dedicate your life to the creation of useful knowledge and tools, as Ben Shneiderman has, it is painful to see your lessons or inventions perverted in some way. It happens, however, no matter how hard you work to keep your creations on a path of proper use. Besides the original design of hyperlinks, […]

I recently read an article by Stuart Frankel that appeared on HBR.org titled “Data Scientists Don’t Scale” (May 2, 2015). It began by pointing out that the recent “reverence” for Big Data and Data Science “has disillusioned many of us” and is “about to get a reality check.” I share this perspective, but not for […]

Data sensemaking requires skill augmented by good technologies. Even though data sensemaking skills can be developed by almost anyone, they can only be acquired through sustained effort to learn the relevant concepts, principles, and practices, which takes time. This hard fact isn’t as appealing as the fantasy that technologies can turn us into data analysts […]