One of the leading contestants at the Error Message of 2015 contest is another gem from good old Cognos:
One of the reports from the default Audit report package produced this one :)
Another good reason to not use these charts!
M.
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Can you have too much pie?
Jep, you can!
One of the leading contestants at the Error Message of 2015 contest is another gem from good old Cognos:
One of the reports from the default Audit report package produced this one :)
Another good reason to not use these charts!
M.
One of the leading contestants at the Error Message of 2015 contest is another gem from good old Cognos:
One of the reports from the default Audit report package produced this one :)
Another good reason to not use these charts!
M.
A little bit of pie chart fun
I know I've been ranting about pie charts a lot... But there are more people who think pie charts are meaningless.
Another punch in the face to the anti-pie-chart comunity
IBM had published a video tutorial on... Dynamically exploding pie charts... "WTF?" is the only thing I could come up with...
Seems that they have not bothered fixing anything that would be useful for C 10.1 and instead wasted their time on worthless clicking on pie charts...
Seems that they have not bothered fixing anything that would be useful for C 10.1 and instead wasted their time on worthless clicking on pie charts...
The progress of user requests
Almost two years ago I have written a rant about customers asking to build Business Intelligence solutions that deliver only data extracts in tables, not being able to think further etc etc etc... (By the way, reading it one more time today made me smile at how upset I was at the time... She was a tough nut to crack!) Recently Anonymous (sorry, don't know your name...) posted a very insightful comment on that blog post and got me thinking on how the customers have progressed throughout the two years.
And it actually is a positive development. With a little help, surely.
And it actually is a positive development. With a little help, surely.
Time to figure out the truth!
Reading a lot lately about choosing propper colors for charts and propper charts for certain types of data. And as I almost thought that I know what I'm doing, a very recent event got me seriously confused.
So, to figure out what is what in the real world, I hereby announce this poll.
We have 3 charts displaying market split between 8 companies. Data displayed is year 2010 vs 2009 (2009 in brackets).
All I want you to do is to take a moment, look at the charts and pick the one that you think illustrates best the size of each company among competitors and individual company growth from one year to another (you can click on charts to see them in full size and focus).
Chart A. Collored Pie:
Chart B. Single-Color Pie:
Chart C. Bar Chart:
So...
Appreciate your time!
Conclusions coming as soon as there are enough votes to make a scientific guess out of this :) Current voting status is here.
In the meantime, here is a very related article from Stephen Few Save the Pies for Dessert
You are also more than welcome to express your opinion in the comments!
OK, the last thing you need to do- share this post so that there are as many votes as possible to make it more accurate!
M.
So, to figure out what is what in the real world, I hereby announce this poll.
We have 3 charts displaying market split between 8 companies. Data displayed is year 2010 vs 2009 (2009 in brackets).
All I want you to do is to take a moment, look at the charts and pick the one that you think illustrates best the size of each company among competitors and individual company growth from one year to another (you can click on charts to see them in full size and focus).
Chart A. Collored Pie:
Chart B. Single-Color Pie:
Chart C. Bar Chart:
So...
| Which chart presents the market view data best? | |
| A. Collored Pie | |
| B. Single-color Pie | |
| C. Bar Chart | |
| Web Polls | |
Conclusions coming as soon as there are enough votes to make a scientific guess out of this :) Current voting status is here.
In the meantime, here is a very related article from Stephen Few Save the Pies for Dessert
You are also more than welcome to express your opinion in the comments!
OK, the last thing you need to do- share this post so that there are as many votes as possible to make it more accurate!
M.
So, why do you want this data dump you said?..
OK, I have to be fair on this one. This is just a rant to release some of the thoughts that have piled up today...
I just can't figure out why you want the data dump?! They (customers) always want a bloody data dump. Buying a BI solution for insane amounts of cash and then making DB extracts with them, at the same time getting furious with bad performance... And to top it off, export the result to bloody excel and work themselves to death for half a day there (but that is good performance already!).
Come on people, it is just about time to wake up from the excel based nightmare. THINK what you want out of the numbers. If you think for a month or two, follow closely what you do every day, you will eventually find patterns to your work. You will find the things you do over and over and over again. So tell me one good reason why you want a list with five thousand rows (in the very best of cases) in a report, when all you need is total, top 10 and bottom 10 out of it? to complicate, add the subtotals per product line... fine, it is just as possible. Delivered to you on one page, readible in 1 minute... Spend the rest of the day figuring out what to do to get the bottom 10 moving, instead of trying to locate it!
Ok, I did use a very simple and plain example, but you do get the point? Right? The more complicated things are just as possible. It is possible to replicate almost any (logically explainable) activity in excel into an automated BI solution. Get information delivered to you instead of a boring old table! All it takes is a bit of sane thought, but could save you a couple of days a month to say... play with your kids (work on something else, for you workaholics? ;) ).
There. I feel much better now. The only thing left is to make myself heard arround here. Anyone knows a good "Make Yourself Heard" course?
Good night!
//M.
A little update:
Today reading Seths blog came across this old I need more time post which kinda fits the mood here.
I just can't figure out why you want the data dump?! They (customers) always want a bloody data dump. Buying a BI solution for insane amounts of cash and then making DB extracts with them, at the same time getting furious with bad performance... And to top it off, export the result to bloody excel and work themselves to death for half a day there (but that is good performance already!).
Come on people, it is just about time to wake up from the excel based nightmare. THINK what you want out of the numbers. If you think for a month or two, follow closely what you do every day, you will eventually find patterns to your work. You will find the things you do over and over and over again. So tell me one good reason why you want a list with five thousand rows (in the very best of cases) in a report, when all you need is total, top 10 and bottom 10 out of it? to complicate, add the subtotals per product line... fine, it is just as possible. Delivered to you on one page, readible in 1 minute... Spend the rest of the day figuring out what to do to get the bottom 10 moving, instead of trying to locate it!
Ok, I did use a very simple and plain example, but you do get the point? Right? The more complicated things are just as possible. It is possible to replicate almost any (logically explainable) activity in excel into an automated BI solution. Get information delivered to you instead of a boring old table! All it takes is a bit of sane thought, but could save you a couple of days a month to say... play with your kids (work on something else, for you workaholics? ;) ).
There. I feel much better now. The only thing left is to make myself heard arround here. Anyone knows a good "Make Yourself Heard" course?
Good night!
//M.
A little update:
Today reading Seths blog came across this old I need more time post which kinda fits the mood here.
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