Use a Bar Chart to Communicate Important Trends In my Charts article, I briefly described how to create the most common types of Excel charts. In this article I will highlight important considerations when designing a bar chart to ensure its ability to intuitively illustrate patterns within data. First, I’ll begin with a simple dataset…
Please see my other Statistics articles. Choosing the Correct Method to Intuitively Communicate Data Patterns. Many options exist to intuitively communicate patterns in data for enable strategic decision-making. The following table recommends charts depending on your goals. Chart Purpose Example Bar Chart Simplest method for summarizing data, especially for a smaller number of categories and…
Describing Central Tendency of Data Descriptive statistics is concerned with describing important aspects of set of measurements, organizing and summarizing data. Here’s an example of descriptive statistics using the following dataset: There are 20 statistics classes at a university for which all the ages of the students in one class have been collected – a…
Designing OLAP Data Cubes OLAP Data cubes represent the primary logical object for providing critical, multidimensional analysis common to business intelligence which may be viewed using a variety of tools such as BIDS or Excel. Cubes contain data from two types of tables – a fact or “measure” table (typically one) and multiple dimension tables.…
The Data Store for OLAP Analysis Before an organization may engage in OLAP analysis, leveraging cubes, the data must be denormalized from its primary operational OLTP system into a data warehouse, which consists of measures or “fact tables” for analysis, supporting by dimensions which provide context to the organization’s facts. Once analytical requirements have been…
The Foundation of Business Intelligence (BI) Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is the mechanism by which vast amounts of data is leveraged for strategic decision-making, allowing organizations desiring to achieve and maintain a competitive lead in their market. OLAP is chosen for its ability to deliver faster querying capability, from numerous types of data stores, utilizing…
Please see my other Business Intelligence articles. Leveraging descriptiven and inferential statistics to deliver a competitive, data-drive strategy. Leveraging Free Tools in Statistics I’ve found the following free tools to be very useful when analyzing data. Mockaroo: Easily create large test data sets. https://mockaroo.com/ Meta-Chart: Easily create diagrams and charts. https://www.meta-chart.com/ Descriptive Statistics Descriptive statistics…
Please see my other Business Intelligence articles. Tableau is a very powerful, yet easy-to-use tool to statistically-analyze data and present engaging and intuitive reports. Please click the links below to view examples. Tableau A/B Testing Grades vs. Study Tutor Clarify Distributions with Bins Calculated Field Comparing Workbooks Formatting With Labels Mapping Geographic Data Styling With…
Please see my other Business Intelligence articles. SSRS is Microsoft’s reporting platform which was designed to deliver reports with robust features to support analytical decision-making and part of the Business Intelligence (BI) lifecycle (SQL Server, SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS), and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS). For more information, read An Overview. SQL Server…
Please see my other Business Intelligence articles. SSIS is Microsoft’s ETL platform which was designed to migrate and manipulate data in support of the Business Intelligence (BI) lifecycle (SQL Server, SSIS, SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). For more information, please read SSIS: An Overview. SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) An…
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