Datasets:
Recag
/
C4_1

Dataset card Data Studio Files Community
1
text
stringlengths
10
56.7k
Assuming it begins its publicly traded life flush with capital, Tableau will not just be financially sound — it will also be in a position to help the burgeoning data democracy evolve into something that can last. More money means being able to develop more features that Tableau can use to bolster sales (and further empower business users with data analysis), which should mean the company can afford to also continually improve its free service and perhaps put premium versions in the hands of more types of more non-corporate professionals for free.
Tableau is already easy (I made this) — but not easy enough.
The bottom-up approach has already proven very effective in the worlds of cloud computing, software as a service and open-source software, and I have to assume it’s a win-win situation in analytics, too. Today’s free users will be tomorrow’s paying users once they get skilled enough to want to move onto bigger data sets and better features. But the base products have to be easy enough and useful enough to get started with, or companies will only have a lot of registrations and downloads but very few avid users.
And if Tableau steps ups its game around data democratization, I have to assume it will up the ante for the company’s fellow large analytics vendors and even startups. A race to empower the lower classes on the data ladder would certainly be in stark contrast to the historical strategy of building ever-bigger, ever-more-advanced products targeting only the already-powerful data elite. That’s the kind of revolution I think we all can get behind.
Feature image courtesy of Shutterstock user Tiago Jorge da Silva Estima.
Great article Derrick – appreciating your work on the topic here on GigaOm.
We’re seeing wider availability of reasonably priced BI and visualization software tools to help us understand that harnessing all this data is possible – and I think even consumers are beginning to understand the value of all the data, and the ability to make meaning from it. One part of the puzzle that’s missing from what I can see is the education – knowledge transfer of how individuals can use the tools, what good data science methods are, and how data citizens can actively contribute to the larger data analysis community. I see movements like the Open Data/Open Gov folks, and events like the NYC Big Apps hackathon as part of the solution – but as individuals, where do we go to take part? What is the role of an informed, curious citizen in this? More venues exist for learning some of the ‘how’ to make sense of big data as an individual taking a course online, but I’m not seeing a vision from anyone talking about how to connect all of the dots. To make sense of data, we need the tools, the practitioners, the analysis of the problems, but we also need a vision of how all of these will work. If anyone has ideas of who’s got that vision, I’d love to hear it.
I feel one of the biggest impediments to the democratization of data is access. Most people know what they would like to answer, and how the data needs to be shaped to achieve that, but getting the data to do the actual analysis with can be one of the most difficult aspects.
This is a bit of a plug, but we’re working on enabling data access that is easily attainable by everyone. Our platform http://www.quandl.com is a “search engine for data” that is able to fetch time series data from a disparate sets of sources, and provide it in a simple searchable form that allows users to extract, validate, format, merge, graph, and share it however they want.
By providing the underlying data for analysis tools like Tableau, Statwing, and many others, we feel we can help to create the tool stack that empowers people to create a sustainable DIY data culture.
In every company I’ve worked at, I’ve seen this major divide between IT analysts and Business users. Part of it was cultural, but a major reason was as you point out: “a historical strategy of building ever-bigger, ever-more-advanced products targeting only the already-powerful data elite”. The business user typically was left to use Excel to prepare and analyze data.
It took 15+ years, but thanks to new players like Tableau, Spotfire and Qlikview which were sold primarily to the business user and focused on ease of use, the data democratization process has resulted in a power shift to the business user. Some IT departments have now come around and are trying to accommodate these “shadow IT” projects by providing IT support and giving Tableau users limited access to enterprise data stores.
As for upping the ante for the traditional players, it has happened already. Over the last two years, the larger vendors have responded with products like Visual Insight (MicroStrategy), Visual Intelligence (SAP), PowerPivot (MicroSoft), JMP (SAS) etc. taking aim at this segment of the market. The Big Data market is still new, but the trend to build user-friendly (or at the very least, SQL-aware) tools on top of Hadoop is also hitting its stride.
One good thing coming out of this data democratization is the realization that it has to be supported by a Data Governance effort. Otherwise we’ll see the unfortunate return of a major problem with data democracy: data chaos. Previously it would have meant comparing and reconciling two Excel spreadsheets, now we may end up reconciling the findings from two Tableau workbooks.
Thanks for the comment, and for making a really good point about data governance. Obviously, that’s not too big a concern for personal data use, but competing findings from lots of disparate data sets would be problematic.
John Beilein and the Michigan Wolverines are one win away from a national title. On Saturday the Wolverines knocked off Loyola-Chicago 69-57, outscoring the Ramblers 47-28 in the second half.
Beilein, 65, was born and raised in Burt, NY, a small hamlet in Newfane. Beilein began his coaching career at Newfane High School, where he spent three years. He then took over the basketball program at Erie Community College. After a short stint with Nazareth College and nine years at Le Moyne, Beilein returned to Western New York, where he coached Canisius for five seasons. Beilein then spent time at both Richmond and West Virginia before accepting the Michigan job in 2007.
Michigan hasn't won a national title since 1989. This will be Beilein's second championship appearance with the Wolverines, falling to Louisville in 2012-2013.
The Council of PR Firms yesterday urged PR firms to "pledge" to Wikipedia that they will only submit materials to the hidden "Talk" pages where posts can languish for long periods and which are supervised by anonymous "editors."
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, has decreed an end to arguing over whether Gregory Kohs should have been allowed to speak at WP’s meeting May 30-June 1 at New York Law School.
It has been a momentous June 2014 on Wikipedia for those who follow the endless battle over encyclopedia content that is generated by public relations professionals.
The banning of Gregory Kohs from the Wikipedia conference May 30-June 1 has sparked an "edit war" of 10,000+ words on WP. Defenders of Kohs say he was "condemned without a trial" and start petition.
New York magazine, a "reliable source" to Wikipedia, has upset WP editors by linking to the odwyerpr.com coverage of WP critic Gregory Kohs being banned from the May 30-June 1 conference.
The tense relationship between the PR and Wiki communities ranked front and center at the first national WikiConference USA held May 30-June 1 at New York Law School in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood.
Wikipedia, whose 21 billion hits a month makes it the fifth most popular website, drew 300 to a conference in New York this weekend. PR people are grappling with WP’s huge, autocratic and anonymous panel of editors.
Qorvis partner Matt Lauer has unleashed a barrage of criticism of Wikipedia over its policies blocking PR firms from editing content about clients and firms themselves, sparking a sparring match with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales.
PR firm rankings by '18 net fees with separate charts for 12 public relations specialties such as healthcare PR, tech PR and travel PR. Look up top PR firms in key cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Jan., PR Buyer's Guide/Crisis Comms.
Each month a different area of PR is examined and firms with strengths in the focus area are profiled.
Two Democratic state representatives from South Florida said Thursday that they've gathered with 33 colleagues to file paperwork with the Secretary of State to poll lawmakers for their support for a special session.
At the end of session, superintendents and the statewide teachers' union called for the Legislature to redo their education funding in the budget they were about to pass. When a special session seemed imminent on gambling issues, again, they made the same call, without success.
Now, Democrats have organized a last-ditch effort to use an obscure state law to poll lawmakers on their willingness to come back for a special session to address education funding.
State Reps. Shevrin Jones of West Park and Nicholas Duran of Miami said Thursday that they and 33 others have filed petitions with the Florida Secretary of State for the poll. This method of calling a special session circumvents the Republican Legislative leadership, who typically are the ones who must call any special sessions and declare its purpose.
Both Jones and Duran hail from the two counties, Broward and Miami-Dade, hit hardest by a change in the way the state calculates school funding this year, designed to direct more dollars to smaller districts. They, like the rest of the House members who aren't termed out, are up for re-election.
"In the aftermath of Parkland and the waning days of session, the Legislature took action for the safety of our schools," Duran said. "In our rush to do something we didn't account for the conesequences of that bill 7026 and now the school districts are facing those consequences."
Since the passage of this year's budget as well as SB 7026, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, school districts have been scrambling to comply with the new safety requirements as well as their normal operations. Several are considering raising local property taxes.
Democrats tried the same tactic after the Pulse shooting in the summer of 2016, in an effort to force a special session vote on guns. They failed to garner enough support to call the session.
This year's final vote on the budget was taken on March 11, the Sunday after the legislative session was supposed to end but it went into overtime after the Feb. 14 Parkland shooting changed the entire direction of the session and caused lawmakers to reconcile with issues like school safety and gun rights not previously taking center stage.
Jones was not present for the vote on the budget. He said it was because after the Legislature's official end date he needed to go back to his full-time job as the executive director of the Florida Reading Corps, a branch of AmeriCorps. Duran voted yes, along with many other Democrats who argued against the budget but who ultimately voted for it.
"When our members were presented with the budget, they were presented with something they did not like," Jones said. "But (some are) going to vote for it because there are some good things in there."
Despite the fact that Republicans have said repeatedly that they are proud of the investment they made this year in education, Jones said this poll at the very least will require every lawmaker to go on the record in an election year with their position on the current school funding levels.
It's unlikely the Democrats will succeed, but now that the Secretary of State has received Jones and Duran's petition, that office will send out the poll today. Lawmakers will have until noon on May 24 to respond, according to Sarah Revell from the Secretary of State's office.
He and a neighbor managed to lure the horse toward them with a handful of grass, Sickinger said, and they even petted the horse for a bit. Sickinger had a strap he planned to use to bridle the horse, but he said better judgment took over and he decided the horse was too wild to control even if he could wrangle it.
Sickinger told a St. Clair County sheriff’s deputy the horse might belong to a neighbor. There are several horse farms in the area, but none came forward as the owner, Sickinger said.
Moments after Sickinger started petting the horse, a truck drove by and the horse followed after it. No one would see the horse until more than a week later.
On Wednesday, area resident Aranza Lee spotted the horse in a soybean field near Imbs Station and Wagner roads, less than a mile from Sickinger’s home. She captured a video of the horse running freely through the field and shared it to the Millstadt News Facebook page. By Thursday afternoon, the post had more than 400 shares, but no one had come forward as the owner.
“I mean, how weird is that?” said Sara Yoch of Smithton, a self-described horse-lover.
Lt. Alan Haake of the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department said the department has received several reports over the past three weeks about the missing horse, but he said no one has come forward as the owner, nor has anyone been able to catch it.
Yoch was out at the intersection of Otten and Wagner roads Thursday afternoon with a bucket of feed and a lead, looking for the horse. She said she was out in the same area Wednesday for about four hours, but didn’t have any luck.
She warned area residents to avoid approaching the horse if they aren’t familiar with how horses behave, and to slow down when driving through the area. Yoch said a horse standing in a road on a dark night can cause serious damage to a vehicle and hurt the driver, as well as the horse, of course.
It’s possible the horse was dumped, according to Stephanie Goepfert, a member of the Lincoln Trail Riders in O’Fallon. It can easily cost more than $500 a month to care for a horse, Goepfert said, and it’s possible the owner could not afford to keep it.
On its own, the horse could get sick or injured, Goepfert added.
“They can survive for a period of time in the wilderness, but if they’re a domesticated animal, they’re relying on a certain diet. It can be bad for them,” Goepfert said.
They can survive for a period of time in the wilderness, but if they’re a domesticated animal, they’re relying on a certain diet. It can be bad for them.
The most recent sign of the horse was a bedded-down area next to a creek near where the horse was spotted on Tuesday, Lee said.
There was no sign of the horse as of Thursday afternoon, though several groups were planning to head out and search for it.
Anyone who spots the horse can call the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department at 618-207-4374.
Hospitals are seeking ways to reduce readmissions, due to new penalties from Medicare.
Demand for qualified professionals in the health care industry is expected to continue rising, according to the Healthcare Association of New York State.
Certified registered nurse anesthetists, also known as CRNAs, say they, and not doctors, administer anesthesia, and physician supervision simply adds costs.
Wolf, 33, joined the Africa Mercy crew in March, taking a short leave from her job as a registered nurse with the UC Davis Medical Center’s burn unit. She sat down recently to talk about language barriers, cabin fever and readjusting to life in east Sacramento.
Q: Between orphanage work in Zimbabwe and Guatemala and clinic work in Bolivia, you’re no stranger to long flights. How did that come about?
A: I’ve always enjoyed traveling, and then once I became a nurse, to be able to use that career overseas was really neat to me. What intrigued me about Mercy Ships is it’s a fully run hospital – you have a lot of equipment, you have a lot of medications. It’s a lot of what I get to do here, over there.
I am a Christian, and I think a lot of it has to do with seeing how God’s heart breaks when people are broken and poor. So much that you see is diseases of poverty.
Q: In August, you were scheduled to join a Mercy Ships crew in Benin in West Africa, but the service was canceled due to a possible Ebola case. Months later, your own hospital became a designated Ebola treatment center, and you took part in the preparedness efforts. Would you have considered going overseas to provide care during the outbreak if given the chance?
A: Had I been signed up with an Ebola team, I wouldn’t have been opposed. I enjoy the risk. I think that’s part of why I became a nurse, because there’s always those risks out there. When that came up, I decided to not be scared and to take more education and learn more about Ebola. For me, it was just a decision of, I’m a nurse, and I have risks even at UC Davis in Sacramento, and that’s why we learn to protect ourselves.
Q: You said you had a much heavier patient load and more limited resources on the ship than you do in Sacramento. What did you learn on this trip that you’ll bring back to UCD?
A: In the ward, there were 15 patients at a time with five nurses and five translators. There were people on the guitar and singing, and kids running around. It was a very different environment for me. I had to calculate my antibiotics and draw them up and mix them. It was just a stretch for me as a nurse, to need to focus on something, but also learn an art of nursing where I am appreciating and valuing the relationships of the Malagasy people. ... Just challenging my mind to see that I can function differently, and to bring that back to the burn unit is huge.
Q: Working in the oral and facial ward, you said you saw a lot of patients with physical obstructions that had long been neglected, such as large dental tumors or cleft palates. What is life like for them after surgery?
A: When you have a pimple and it feels like the end of the world, imagine missing a nose or having a tumor that’s out to there (gestures to a point several inches from her face). A lot of our patients lose their families, or their spouses will leave them. They are outcasts from society, so this gives them confidence. It brings them a huge healing, not just the physical aspect but their soul as well. ... When they have that healing, they finally feel like they can enter society again.
Q: Even on top of the jet lag, you must have a lot going on right now. How do you readjust to your old life?
A: I’ve done the reverse culture shock thing before, of coming to the U.S. and feeling like this is crazy. For me, it’s always reminding myself that these are two beautiful cultures that are different. There are good things about both of them. For me, knowing that God is present in both and working in both helps. But I never want to forget what I see.
OK!'s NYC Fashion Week Blog: Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B.
Can’t make it to NYC for Fashion Week? Don’t worry, OK!’s got you covered!
We’ll be hitting up all the big shows and reporting back right here, every day, as soon as we tear our eyes off the runway!
This afternoon we caught an eyeful at Gwen Stefani‘s L.A.M.B. show.
WHO: Gwen Stefani and baby Zuma.
FASHION: Edgy, rocker chic, high-heel booty shoes, over-the-knee-boots, straps, ripped shirts, over-the-knee socks, muti-fabric tight pants, military inspired cargo pants, layered, dark colors. Leather jackets, metallic jackets, some plaid, British inspired asymmetrical jackets with separate corset, futuristic leather dresses, ruched black catsuit, wool trench coats.
BEAUTY: Bangs with curled 1940’s inspired hair, dark maroon lipstick, smokey dark eyes, almost Dita Von Teese-esque. Very dramatic. Styling by Paula Bradley, makeup by Charlotte Tilbury and the M.A.C. Pro Team, hair by Danilo at the Wall Group.
A Chicago judge on Thursday dismissed a patent case between Apple and Motorola because, he said, neither side could adequately "establish a right to relief."
As a result, a trial that was set to begin on Monday has been canceled. However, U.S. District Judge Richard Posner said he would "delay entry of judgment until I have prepared a full opinion, because in the course of that preparation, I may change my mind."
In his brief filing yesterday, however, Posner said Apple has already admitted that it cannot prove damages on two of the four patents it is using against Motorola. On the two remaining patents, Posner said yesterday that he does not think Apple will prevail.
Both companies think damages are an adequate remedy for the alleged infringements, "though they failed to present evidence on damages strong enough to withstand summary judgment," Posner wrote. Since "injunctive relief would impose costs disproportionate to the harm to the patentee and the benefit of the alleged infringement to the allowed infringer and would be contrary to the public interest, I cannot find a basis for an aware of injunctive relief," he said.
Apple requested a full evidentiary hearing on the matter, but Posner said the "existing evidentiary record is adequate."
Motorola did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As patent blogger Florian Mueller noted, the case will likely now head to the Federal Circuit.
The decision comes several days after Posner dismissed one of two patents Motorola was trying to assert against Cupertino in the same case.
FILE - Guinea security forces, center, face people rioting and burning rubbish and other goods in the streets of Conakry, April 13, 2015.
Guinean security forces clashed with anti-government protesters in the opposition stronghold of Labe on Thursday, beating one man to death, the government said.
"His friends got away but he was captured and beaten in the heat of the moment," said Moustapha Naite, deputy government spokesman. "He didn't survive his injuries and is dead."
The demonstrators, protesting against a delay in holding local elections in the West African country, erected makeshift barricades in Labe, several hundred kilometers northeast of Conakry, and threw rocks at police who responded with tear gas.
"It is currently really tense in Labe," Naite said, adding that the authorities were trying to calm the situation.
Hundreds of people also marched in the capital Conakry as well as the cities of Kindia and Dabola as part of a nationwide protest, considered illegal by the government, against the timing of elections.
The opposition accuses the government of breaking a promise it made in 2013 to hold a long-delayed local ballot before a presidential vote due in October this year.
President Alpha Conde told journalists during a visit to Paris on Wednesday that there were no plans to change the electoral calendar.
In Conakry's suburb of Bambeto, residents said they heard a spurt of gunfire at noon, without specifying the origin.
A local radio station Lynx FM said that several people with bullet injuries had been brought into a local clinic in the capital, although this could not be independently verified.
"Since this morning, we are trying to stop protesters from gathering. Whenever we see a group we try to disperse them rapidly," said a police officer, requesting anonymity. He said he was not aware of reports of gunfire.
Protests earlier this month turned violent and the opposition accuses security forces of firing live rounds at protesters, wounding several people. The government denies this.
Presidential and legislative elections since 2010, when Guinea emerged from decades of military rule, have been marred by violent protests, with parties divided along ethnic lines.