Data Visualization

Data visualization is always a hot topic in big data and analytics in business. What is data visualization? A formal definition would say “Data visualization is a general term that describes any effort to help people understand the significance of data by placing it in a visual context. Patterns, trends and correlations that might go undetected in text-based data can be exposed and recognized easier with data visualization software.” Basically, it is showing data in charts, graphs, heat maps or other types of visuals that are easy for people who don’t get analytics to digest. People have been doing this for years with Excel, but now there are much more sophisticated tools that can do this such as Tableau. There are a lot of reason to adapt data visualization into your strategy. Here are five ways that it can help your business. Data visualization tools will vastly help the folks in your business who might be decision makers, make those decisions faster. Visuals are much easier to digest and faster to understand than rows and rows of analytics. Investing in a good data visualization tool will really help your business and can be used across all of your departments, regardless of what industry you’re in.

Quick Tips to Show You're Analytical

Tips for entering into a data focused job.

The majority of job descriptions that you read these days will have “Highly analytical” or “Strong analytical skills” or “ability to think analytically” under the required skill set section.  You may be thinking “but this is a sales role?” or “but this is an entry level role?”  Most jobs now require some degree of analytical ability.  What does that mean exactly?  It means they want to be able to at the very least, throw a spreadsheet at you and you pull meaning from the numbers to put into a presentation for their clients.  It can be much more complicated than that, as well, but can be as simple as that.

There are a few easy, and free, ways that you can get your resume to show your analytical ability.  First, you can get take googles free course and get certified in Google Analytics.  Oh, you don’t want to be in marketing you say?  That’s OK, having some sort of proof that you’re able to deal with data, in some sort of context, such as being Google Analytics Certified, will help you stand out from other candidates.  Another way is by making sure you know how to use Microsoft Excel, there are loads of YouTube videos for this if you don’t.  Now I don’t mean simple spreadsheets, I mean being able to do Pivot Tables, vlookups etc. And then also, spelling that out on your resume. Example: Experienced in Microsoft Excel (including Pivot tables, vlookups).  Every resume I have ever seen says that they are experienced with Microsoft Office and list Excel, but very few actually put the advanced features they can do.

Big Data and Health Care

There is a lot of talk around big data, predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and so on.  Primarily, this talk is around the field of marketing, or how a business can improve its business, or sell or more things or drive growth etc. etc.  What is a less talked about is the good that big data can bring to the world.  I’m not talking about having more entertaining technology, I’m talking about big data and health care.

There are a few ways that big data has already made an impact in health care.  One is that of medicine and clinical trials.  Huge amounts of data are involved in the testing and development of new medicines. Recently data sharing led to a breakthrough medicine that can potential help curing types of lung cancers.  Another way big data has already been used in health care is in the fight against the spread of epidemics.  Cell phone location tracking data helped track population movement and predict the spread of the Ebola virus. There were then able to target these better.

A way that big data can really help in the health care industry in the future is by coming up with personalized medicine.  It will be able to tailor medicine to a persons genetic makeup.  It will take into consideration a persons dna, lifestyle and environment and then compare it to others to predict illnesses and treatments.