We love to put things in order. “Which college is best, second best, third best, etc., and how can I get my kid into one near the top of the list?” “I love God, Mom, America, and apple pie, in that order.” “Formal education consists of elementary school, middle school, high school, undergraduate school, and […]

It galls me when people oversell data visualization. Data visualization combines technologies (visual representations of quantitative data) with specific skills (techniques for creating and interacting with those visual representations) to make sense of and communicate quantitative data. It does not replace the other technologies and skillsets that are also needed to derive value from quantitative […]

I just finished reading the book about Artificial Intelligence (AI) that I’ve been craving for years: Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, by Melanie Mitchell. More than any other book on this hot but largely misunderstood topic, this book describes AI in clear and accessible terms. It cuts through the hype to present a […]

As data sensemakers, we spend a great deal of time examining quantitative relationships. Along with distribution, correlation, and time-series relationships, proportion is the other quantitative relationship that plays a significant role in data sensemaking. A proportion is just a relationship between two quantities. If we compare the number of friends that Sally and John each […]