Music and snow.

Poke my eyes out

Perhaps your immediate response is: “I’d rather poke my eyes out with a burning stick than do data analysis.”

There’s a completely different reaction from a lot of people who have experienced data analysis.

Music

It’s not entirely clear why humans like music so much. Part of it may be the guessing game we do.  We perceive a pattern in the music and guess where it will go next.  One of two things happens:

• we are gratified to be right
• we are surprised to be wrong

Read more →

Move your data analysis to a computing environment specifically designed for it.

Why R and not spreadsheets?

Here are three reasons:

• complexity
• graphics
• money

Spreadsheets are easily overwhelmed.  Very complex things can be done in spreadsheets — it is just that complex spreadsheets are inefficient and dangerous.

Graphics should be considered vital when doing anything with data.  R has amazing graphical capabilities. Read more →