In our previous post, we described what business users could accomplish during data discovery, selection and analysis. We used the TIBCO Spotfire, Tableau Desktop and Hortonworks Platform tools to show how business users can build serious data scientist chops without a PhD.
This time, we complete the workflow by reviewing the platform’ data visualization and sharing capabilities.
Visualize Data
A visual summary of information makes it easy to recognize patterns and outliers in large data sets. Visualization software has been around for a while. But modern analytics platforms take visualization to new levels of data processing power, versatility and user convenience.
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- Visualizations plus. Each of the major platform brands combine visualizations with different high-end capabilities such as an in-memory BI tool (Tableau), reporting capabilities (Hadoop) and embedded predictive analytics (Spotfire).
- Quick, easy setup. It’s easy to choose attributes that set up defaults, object and tools—just click and go. Spotfire gets high marks for its usability. With it, you can create visualizations from several data sources and use drag-and-drop technology to shift between views during analysis. For all three platforms, simpler visualizations are easy to build, even for a novice. But more complex ones require more effort and training.
- A wide variety of objects to display. In addition to all of the usual output (charts, simple graphs), you can create multi-source scatter charts and other visuals to track possible cause-and-effect relationships in your data. Tableau Desktop takes the prize for the eye-popping variety of data sources, which can be used alone or in combination. Tableau Server supports browser-based tools for data visualization. It provides a very wide range of visualizations and dashboards supported by Tableau and makes them available to iPad and Android portable devices.
Share Results
It’s possible to visualize data and provide insights for many specific audiences (financial services, healthcare and scientific research, for example). Now, you can share it, too. Sharing is becoming more important, as a way to publish and distribute useful data sets as well as insights.
Tableau and Spotfire enable you to create customized, carefully designed dashboards designed to make complex data easier to read and understand. Of course, you can do this yourself, without IT help. And all three platform have editions that enable you to distribute results via on-premises apps and the cloud.
Next Time: We explore data discovery wizardry that will amaze your colleagues and add value to your work.
Interested to see how Syntelli can help your team make the most of your data and your visualization tools?
Contact us today!If you missed our CFP Data Viz from last week, be sure to view it here.
Mario Carloni
Data Scientist
About Mario: Mario performs statistical analysis and reporting for Energy, Manufacturing, and Medical sectors. He is focused on analysing and visualising business logic to allow the discovery of systemic flaws. Prior to Syntelli, Mario was a Research Assistant at the Public Policy Center. While at PPC, Mario worked on social science research for evidence-based policymaking at the state, regional, and local levels for public, private, and nonprofit partners.
Mario received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts. While at UMass, Mario was International Orientation Leader, International Student Conversation Partner, and IT Assistant, gaining broad systems thinking at the technological and social level.
