Blips - Explaining the Why, What, When, Where, How Questions

Yesterday Ted Cuzillo posted an article which outlined the struggle I’ve had coming up with a simple way to explain the value of ad hoc visual analysis.

Being schooled in business during the Deming quality revolution, there is a quote attributed to Mr. Deming which explains how I mentally process business opportunities or problem-solving, 

“In God we trust, all others bring data.”

Visual analysis is a difficult concept to explain.  Invariably people believe that it’s “charts.”  Rendering numbers in an appropriate chart does help you identify trends, spot outliers and understand what other questions you should be asking, but the chart itself doesn’t answer the “blip” question.

Here’s an example:

A typical time series analysis commonly used for sales tracking.

I show people this chart without the question mark  or quantity & time legends and ask them,

“What’s the first question that comes to your mind when you look at this chart?”

The typical response is, “What does the vertical axis stand for?”  I tell them it doesn’t matter.  It can mean whatever you want it to mean. 

Most people understand that the horizontal axis describes time.  The variety of answers is really interesting and depends on what the person does for a living.  But there is a nearly universal reaction.  What does the verticle “blip” mean?  Why is it there?  What caused it?

The value of a rapid visual analysis tool becomes more apparent at this point.

With Tableau, you can answer these kinds of questions with a right click of the mouse bottom or by creating another view of the same information, perhaps in a more granular table format, or by using a detailed bar chart which is sorted in descending values.

Before the advent of the spreadsheet it was a very time-consuming process to create a chart.  After the spreadsheet charts were easier to make but answering what caused the “blip” still wasn’t always quick and easy.

Today, with tools like Tableau, getting to the root cause of the blip is easy.  You don’t need an expensive data warehouse.  You don’t need months of training.  Just get the detailed information and paste it into Tableau. Whether it is data from inside your business or informaton from a website, you can start answering why those “blips” exist, very quickly.

If W. Edward Deming were alive today he would have loved these tools.