Data is a Wonderful Thing

The world we live in is generating increasing amounts of data each and every day.  And this is great as when you have the data, you can analyze and graph it in new and interesting ways.  From sports to weather to financials to politics to demographics to who knows what, being able to analyze data, look at trends, and visualize it through graphs, charts, maps, etc. brings tremendous power and insight.

Some examples of interesting data or analysis thereof I've come across in just the past week or so:

• Who Drives Better, Men or Women? - A good example of how you need to look at data in the right context in order to arrive at the right conclusion.
• What Sports Can Teach Us About Analytics: The MIT Sloan Conference - Sports, in particular baseball, has a vast amount of great data and like me, Stephen can't get enough of it.  But like he observes, the conference being about sports is somewhat incidental and the lessons learned can be applied to traditional business.
• My Basketball Computer Rankings - I have traditionally focused on football, but the past few years I've taken a closer look at who "should" make the 65 team NCAA basketball tournament.  It never ceases to amaze me how accurate a computer just looking at scores can be in predicting or projecting results.
• Statistics for a changing world: Google Public Data Explorer in Labs - A tremendous resource for accessing and looking at vast amounts of data.
• Strange Maps - A bunch of interesting ones.  Did you know that the farthest you can get from a McDonalds in the lower 48 is 145 miles?

Stay tuned, I'll continue to share interesting data and applications of it I come across.