The Analytics Power Hour

How is an outlier in the data like obscenity? A case could be made that they're both the sort of thing where we know it when we see it, but that can be awfully tricky to perfectly define and detect. Visualize many data sets, and some of the data points are obvious outliers, but just as many (or more) fall in a gray area—esp...

Do you cringe at the mere mention of the word, "insights"? What about its fancier cousin, "actionable insights"? We do, too. As a matter of fact, on this episode, we discovered that Moe has developed an uncontrollable reflex: any time she utters the word, her hands shoot up uncontrolled to form air quotes. Alas! Our podcast is an audio medium! What about those poor souls who got hired into an "Insigh...

Why? Or… y? What is y? Why, it's mx + b! It's the formula for a line, which is just a hop, a skip, and an error term away from the formula for a linear regression! On the one hand, it couldn't be simpler. On the other hand, it's a broad and deep topic. You've got your parameters, your feature engineering, your regularization, the risks of flawed assumptions and multicollinearity and overfitting, the ...

In celebration of International Women’s Day, this episode of Analytics Power Hour features an all-female crew discussing the challenges and opportunities in AI projects. Moe Kiss, Julie Hoyer and Val Kroll, dive into this AI topic with guest expert, Kathleen Walch, who co-developed the CPMAI methodology and the seven patterns of AI (super helpful for your AI use cases!). Kathleen has helpful frameworks and colorful examples to il...

Every listener of this show is keenly aware that they are enabling the collection of various forms of hyper-specific data. Smartphones are movement and light biometric data collection machines. Many of us augment this data with a smartwatch, a smart ring, or both. A connected scale? Sure! Maybe even a continuous glucose monitor (CGM)! But… why? And what are the ramifications both for changing the way...

We all know that data doesn't speak for itself, but what happens when multiple instruments of measurement contain flaws or gaps that impede our ability to measure what matters on their own? Turning to our intuition and triangulation of what's happening in the broader macro sense can often help explain our understanding of our customers' ever-changing choices, opinions, and actions. Thankfully we had<...

Every so often, one of the co-hosts of this podcast co-authors a book. And by “every so often” we mean “it’s happened once so far.” Tim, along with (multi-)past guest Dr. Joe Sutherland, just published Analytics the Right Way: A Business Leader's Guide to Putting Data to Productive Use...

The start of a new year is a great time for reflection as well as planning for the year ahead. Join us for this special bonus episode where we talk through some of our favorite learnings and takeaways from our 2024 listener survey and some of the ways we’ve already been able to put that feedback into practice! We also have some freebies and helpful nuggets to share with our listeners, so be sure to tune in to learn more. For comple...

Every year kicks off with an air of expectation. How much of our Professional Life in 2025 is going to look a lot like 2024? How much will look different, but we have a pretty good idea of what the difference will be? What will surprise us entirely—the unknown unknowns? By definition, that last one is unknowable. But we thought it would be fun to sit down with returning guest Barr Moses from Monte Carlo to see what we ...

Ten years ago, on a cold dark night, a podcast was started, 'neath the pale moonlight. There were few there to see (or listen), but they all agreed that the show that was started looked a lot like we. And here we are a decade later with a diverse group of backgrounds, perspectives, and musical tastes (see the lyrics for "Long Black Veil" if you missed...

Data storytelling is a perpetually hot topic in analytics and data science. It's easy to say, and it feels pretty easy to understand, but it's quite difficult to consistently do well. As our guest, Duncan Clark, co-founder and CEO of Flourish and Head of Europe for Canva, described it, there's a difference between "communicating" and "understanding" (or, as Moe put it, there's a difference between "explaining" and "exploring"). Dat...

There's data, data everywhere, including in the media! Data often gets collected, analyzed, published in a study, covered by a journalist, and then distilled down to a headline. The opportunities for lost-in-translation (or lost-in-simplification? Lost-in-summarization?) misfires are many. We tried an experiment—each of the available co-hosts brought some headlines that made them raise an eyebrow, an...

KPIs? Really? It’s 2024. Can’t we just ask Claude to generate those for us? We say… no. There are lots and lots of things that AI can take on or streamline, but getting meaningful, outcome-oriented alignment within a set of business partners as they plan a campaign, project, or initiative isn’t one of them! Or, at least, we’re pretty sure that’s what our special guest for this episode would say. He’s been thinking about (and ...

udging by the number of inbound pitches we get from PR firms, AI is absolutely going to replace most of the work of the analyst some time in the next few weeks. It’s just a matter of time until some startup gets enough market traction to make that happen (business tip: niche podcasts are likely not a productive path to market dominance, no matter what Claude from Marketing says). We’re skeptical. But that doesn’t mean we don’t thin...

For the first time since they've been a party of five, all of the Analytics Power Hour co-hosts assembled in the same location. That location? The Windy City. The occasion? Chicago's first ever MeasureCamp! The crew was busy throughout the day inviting attendees to "hop on the mic" with them to answer various questions. We covered everything from favorite interview questions to tips and tricks, with some #hottake quest...

To data analyst, or to data science? To individually contribute, or to manage the individual contributions of others? To mid-career pivot into analytics, or to… oh, hell yes! That last one isn’t really a choice, is it? At least, not for listeners who are drawn to this podcast. And this episode is a show that can be directly attributed to listeners. As we gathered feedback in our recent listener survey, we asked for topic suggestion...

It's human nature to want to compare yourself or your organization against your competition, but how valuable are benchmarks to your business strategy? Benchmarks can be dangerous. You can rarely put your hands on all the background and context since, by definition, benchmark data is external to your organization. And you can also argue that benchmarks are a lazy way to evaluate performance, or at least some co-hosts o...

While we don’t often call it out explicitly, the driving force behind much of what and how much data we collect is driven by a "just in case" mentality: we don't know exactly HOW that next piece of data will be put to use, but we better collect it to minimize the potential for future regret about NOT collecting it. Data collection is an optionality play—we strive to capture "all the data" so that we ...

Broadly writ, we’re all in the business of data work in some form, right? It’s almost like we’re all swimming around in a big data lake, and our peers are swimming around it, too, and so are our business partners. There might be some HiPPOs and some SLOTHs splashing around in the shallow end, and the contours of the lake keep changing. Is lifeguarding…or writing SQL…or prompt engineering to get AI to write SQL…or identifying busine...