Showing posts with label Tableau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tableau. Show all posts

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Power in BI = Power BI

Many times decisions are based upon existing Features. 'The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change', we do not want to base a decision on existing product features. When comparing we take into consideration how other competitive products/services are evolving. Are they adding new features? How frequently?

Tableau and Qlik historically had lead over Power BI in Data Visualization. I am now convinced that Power BI has the edge over others, here is the Gartner BI and Analytics magic quadrant report which ranks Power BI as visionary.

This is why I believe Power BI has edge over other

1. Organizations uses on an average '13' apps (data sources) - Okta Research finding

Which applies, a business analyst will have at least 13 tables joins to make a meaningful story. He/she has to slog (to understand the tables/views/relationships) if there is content pack, to get data from source. There are plenty of app connectors available on all three tools- Power BI, Tableau and Qlik. Power BI has more app connectors than others, you can quickly and easily get the required data from apps. Microsoft has understood the  importance of participating in open source, as it has officially joined the Linux foundation today. Not only it has connections to existing Microsoft stack (cloud/on premise), but also other others - Salesforce, Google Analytics, Github and many others. 

2. We need to store the data before consuming it, need to save data in SQL and other formats

ETL will be more relevant than ever before, to make a sense from multiple data sources - a good (join) relationship is required. Tableau and Qlik can read files and other data source, but they lack the ETL layer. Microsoft stack (SQL, Azure SQL and others) provides tools to transform and save the data in SQL and other formats. The complex transformation can Microsoft stack, leaving the light transformation to Power BI. Power BI as a part of Microsoft family has tremendous advantage.

3. Price, Price, Price

Look no further. At $9.99/Month is the Power BI pro version, the least expensive of the all products.


There are features which Power BI lacks currently - as discussed here by Tableau. This features comparison will not be relevant in the future, Power BI will catch up quickly. For some scenarios maybe Power BI is not the best Data Visualization tool. As a generalist which most of us are, we will find Power BI to be flexible, powerful and affordable.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

World Cup 2014 -Predictive Analytics Showdown

Are you in World Cup 2014 friendly pool? Get help from 'experts' on statistically predicting 'who would advance and win the 2014 World Cup'.

If your betting window is closed, enjoy the game.

The models being off-target and you lose, it's very likely you will forget the loss (Freakonomics, bad predictions are rarely punished). Statistical models always learn from past recent events and refine the variables. Hope you win next time.

Here are the collections of World Cup 2014 Data Analytics and Visualizations

Nate Silver Vs. Goldman Sachs Vs. Bloomberg

Remember Nate Silver, 2008 US General Elections Prediction?, He and his team at FiveThirtyEight have statistical models on various subjects- Politics, Economics, Science, Life and Sports.

I like FiveThirtyEight.com the visualization of the model.

FiveThirtyEight explains the statistical models which calculates the probability of teams advancing to the World Cup 2014 final. This model uses ESPN's SPI (Soccer Power Index).

Bloomberg with BSports have a good visualization, you can add your predictions and visualize.

The third model is by Goldman Sachs (they have been doing this since last four World cups)

SAP vs SAS vs R

SAP Lumira has fun facts and profitability.

There is not much analysis by SAS team, except this blog.

R-Bloggers contributors have posted statistical predictions -one favoring Germany and other Brazil.

Statsinthewild has interesting stats and data visualization.
Data Visualization

My favorite tool to visualize and learn World cup data is Google Trends. It uses real-time search data and uses interesting visualization techniques. I LOVE IT !!!

Tableau uses ESPN SPI statistics

What's is the difference between Prediction and Forecasting?
Prediction is a estimate of a specific event in the future. Forecasting is identifying all possible outcomes with each having its own probability, the total probability of all events will be close to 1.

The world just woke up now to 'Predictive Analysis'. The below Google Trends graphs seems to agree



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