Perception vs Data: Is This The Rainiest Summer Ever?

Weather report on bTV

"Oh, not again!". This is the thought that flashed through my sleepy head this morning when the weather woman stood in front of a map densely covered by small pictures of rain and lightnings. It has been very rainy summer. The never ending rain and the missing sunshine have been a major topic in the conversations for the last few months. Everyone around is sort of angry for the lost opportunities for good times outdoors. The phrases of the day are "This is the rainiest summer ever!", "There has never been such a summer before" and "I don't remember a summer like this one". It got me thinking if it really is the case or it is our perception playing tricks? I pondered on a similar question in my World Cup post where I tried to find why this tournament is considered to be a fantastic one. In contrast to the emotionally charged football tournaments, the weather perception should be relatively simple to analyze as it has been well recorder for a long time and there is hard data on it as well as there are much less factors to consider.

Is This World Cup Really Better Than Previous Two: Bra 1-7 Ger Update

Is This World Cup Really Better Than Previous Two?

The World Cup in Brazil is perceived to be the best World Cup tournament among the last few ones. This is according to my circle of friends and acquaintances and me as much as I could be a reliable source. It made me think about what makes a football tournament a good one and why exactly this one is better than the ones in 2006 and 2010. I asked around to gather some opinions and I also decided to go and see some data to find whether it could tell bit more about that.

Friday Funny: The Fastest Way Ever to Becoming a Data Scientist

Data scientist and data analyst are among the most wanted positions. It also sounds very cool to be a scientist, despite Sheldon Cooper. There is one little thing that makes it hard to get on the board and it is the amount of work one need to put in developing the required skills. I have a good news to you! Recent research has proved that this an absolute misconception and data-science-related skills could be developed much faster than previously though. There is a recipe to open the door to this lucrative field and it is based on numerous observations on the evolution of experts in the field, so it could be trusted.

Can You Do Better? Some Great Examples of Excel Dashboards

 
Every year the awesome site of Chandoo organizes a Excel dashboards contest. The site has just released the best entries of the latest competition and there is some great stuff. The participants took time to produce fine examples of dashboards. There are a concise comments for what is good and what is bad. Also, every dashboard is available for download if you would like to get in the details of how it is made. Go at the post  and get some ideas, learn and enjoy.

Analytics for The Small Business: Mission Possible

Small business usually has to be very smart  to compete on the market. "Smart" includes not only the personal quality of people running it but also, with growing importance, the ability to analyze business data. The sad truth is that these businesses are left behind by the majority of analytics vendors and the owners struggle to find solutions to meet their needs. The question is what are these solutions that could meet the demand.

My Favourite Job-related Joke

Once there was a company and it had a computer system for its intensive operations. One day, out of he blue sky, the system broke down. The company froze - it could not do anything with it - no sales, no orders processed, no purchases. All the gurus from the IT department sweat over restoring the system, but nothing worked, even Google could not give an advice.

Great Online Course for Data Mining!

Data mining appeal for companies and analytic practitioners is growing by the day. So where should you start with it? Recently I have been evaluating data mining software and courses and I came across a very good one that I can recommend without any hold-backs. This is the MOOC organized by University of Waikato. MOOC stands for "massive open online course" but do not be fooled by the name - its a serious course that delivers right on the target.

The Raise of Data Scientist - Have We Seen That Before?

In a recent conversation somebody was very excited about the marketability of skills in R and similar tools as well as with the growing demand for people having them. The story went about the bright career perspectives - money, good position in the management hierarchy, fame and Aston Martins with Victoria Secret models in them. This person is not alone and his opinion is obviously backed by the growing number of job ads requiring R or similar skills. However, I beg to disagree because we all have seen something very similar and things developed differently.

Age of Miss America Correlated to Murders by Steam?

Age of Miss America And Murders by steam, hot vapors and hot objects

One of the dangers of too much data and too many "scientist" are the spurious correlations. These are correlations that happen purely by chance. If you have time series to explain and massive amount of data sets to test, sooner or later you wold find a meaningful correlation. I have posted about that some time ago but today a co-worker have sent a link with some excellent illustrations of the point and is too good not to share. Go to Spurious Correlations to see them all - some are very funny others are puzzling. I did know that somebody could die by becoming tangled in their bedsheets! Scary bedsheets!