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Learning to use data visualization programs


Gartner Magic Quadrant for data visualization programs

          Imagine spending countless hours analyzing your data and finding a meaningful insight that can help shape direction of your business – the only missing piece is convincing functional stakeholders that your analysis is in fact valuable. In this article we will discuss learning resources offered by leading tools that help us communicate our data findings. In fact, no analysis no matter how thorough and complex it might be could yield any real value if the compelling recommendation is not provided to help company leadership take further action. This is exactly where data visualization comes into play: this software allows us to connect to disparate data sources, wrangle our data, perform ad-hoc analyses, distill a powerful data story and even build dashboards to enable further analysis by other folks in our organizations.

          According to Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms (1) the list of leaders in the data visualization fields include Microsoft Power BI, Tableau and Qlik . In an apparent effort to grow their user base and democratize data analytics, all of these providers offer fully functional versions of their programs free of charge or in case of Microsoft with an affordable subscription plan. Even better, these vendors formalized their knowledge base via various free online learning options.
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First Impressions of using Qlik Sense cloud, using Survey of Business Owners data


First Impressions of using Qlik Sense cloud, using Survey of Business Owners data.

          There is certainly no shortage of various data visualization and BI tools on the market. On this blog we’ve already covered Tableau and Power BI , it’s time for us to review their competition, another leader on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Analytics and BI platforms: Qlik , which offers a suite of different BI tools. For the purposes of this post let’s focus on their web-based free product: Qlik Sense – Cloud. Most of the modern data viz programs are supposed to be rather intuitive and very easy to use; so I decided to play with this program without going through the trouble of learning to use it first. American data finder had just the right data set for this experiment: Survey of Business Owners data, which among other things can help us quantify number of companies by size and owner’s gender, see if male vs. female-owned organizations earn higher revenue, employ more workers, and/or pay higher salaries to their employees. Let the data discovery journey begin.

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Where are the jobs? 2014 INC 5000 List might provide some answers…

2014 INC 5000 data viz

          What do Domino’s Pizza, Microsoft, Timberland, Tough Mudder, Intuit, Vermont Teddy Bear, E*Trade, Lending Club, Morningstar, Oracle, Fuhu, Cold Stone Creamery, Under Armour, and GoDaddy have in common? They all have appeared on Inc Magazine’s INC 500 list of the fastest-growing American private companies. Looking at the last year’s INC 5000 list might help us draw employment insights and identify best industries and places to look for a job. By definition, these company are experiencing tremendous growth, and as such, could be representative of future job opportunities in the US. In addition, according to Forbes , small businesses added over 65% of the net new jobs in the past two decades. So, where are the jobs?! Based on INC 5000 data, Chicago, IL employs over 5% [56,813] of all INC 5000 workers. Another 14% [144,847] of INC 5000 employees work in California. Top 3 industries by employment include: Human Resources, Business Products & Services, and IT Services . Together, they are responsible for almost 400,000 jobs, or 38% of the grand total.

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State Income Tax Rate Inequality in America.

USA State Tax Map

         Let’s face it, as Americans we are not all created equal. This fact is especially pronounced when it comes to paying taxes. Most of us have to pay income taxes, yet the exact amount varies by our income level. Having each individual state impose its own income tax laws does not help this matter either.

         The IRS already makes the task of figuring out your income tax liability rather cumbersome: you have to determine your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), subtract the amount of your deductions (standard or itemized), reduce this number by any personal and dependent exemptions you qualify for; and then hopefully arrive at your Taxable Income amount. After ignoring all of the other possible credits, exceptions and unique tax situations that might or might not apply to you, you can have a lot of fun playing with up to seven tax brackets that correspond to your earnings amount.

         I used the Tax Foundation website to retrieve pertinent state income tax information for 2014 tax year to see exactly how individual states add complexity in calculating our tax liability. I specifically wanted to retrieve maximum possible marginal tax rate by state in 2014. Below are my findings.

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