I could stand to lose a few pounds and I know what I need to do: watch my diet and exercise regularly. Knowing, of course, is not the same as doing, and the doing takes effort. Maybe a spoonful of Read more
This is the first of an occasional series of articles that will examine data that we encounter in our everyday lives. Metrics like unemployment, inflation, stock market averages, crime rates, and the like. Most of us don’t take day-to-day action Read more
You had blood drawn in the doctor’s office as part of your annual physical and just received a printout with a bunch of numbers. Cholesterol 142. Platelets 203. Glucose 93. And so on. And you probably believe them. Why? Do Read more
When I began this blog, it was my intention to include articles about beekeeping. It’s been a few months so I figure it’s about time. Two things happen when you start talking beekeeping. First, you can end up monologuing non-stop Read more
Last weekend I attended the memorial service for Harold Taylor, a FedEx friend and colleague who had succumbed to cancer in February. About a dozen of his co-workers gathered with family and friends in a chapel in Pontotoc, Mississippi. Tables Read more
Peter Drucker famously said that “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Well, he didn’t really say that. Sort of the same way that Humphrey Bogart never said “Play it again Sam” in Casablanca. Drucker actually said, “Culture, no matter how defined, Read more
We expect computers to be perfect. We usually don’t give it a second thought. We expect the document opened today to look exactly the same as it did when it was saved last night. We expect the data inserted in Read more
From Day One, data warehouses and their offspring—data marts, operational data stores, data lakes, lakehouses, and the like—have been technological work-arounds. In Building the Data Warehouse, the 1992 book that launched modern decision support, Bill Inmon recognized the need for Read more
I’m not sure that I know anyone in the data and analytics field whose platform doesn’t face continuous, or at least annual, budget scrutiny. Analytics is expensive. And when cost-cutting is the order of the day, analytics is a big Read more
Important lessons can be learned in one of two ways: the easy way or the hard way. I prefer the easy way, but when it comes to Data Quality, it seems like I’m in the minority. Last week we wondered aloud Read more