Reflections: 2017

2017 is coming to a close, and I wanted to break my blogging hiatus to reflect on the last 12 months. Working abroad One of the best parts of the Data School was having the opportunity to not only work in the UK, but also abroad - and I...

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Why your understanding of ‘elite mentality’ is false, and how data can help solve this problem.

In recent years, there’s been a rise in the usage of the term ‘elite mentality’ - particularly in the world of football (soccer). The application, in the way the term is used, is to describe someone who is a good player, but not ‘elite’...

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Visualisations in the Wild - Sky Sports can do better

5 days ago, Sky Sports posted this image on Twitter. Among the soccer/football analytics community, this was excellent to see given the usage of Sky Sports of Expected Goals - a metric which has been actively pushed amomg bloggers, and indeed...

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Hey, where'd that 'Style Guides' series go?

I've been super lax about blogging over the last year or so. A combination of work, life and learning have overtaken the many series' I planned to follow over the last 12 months. Even my quantified self series fell off after a couple of months as I kept missing my deadlines - making time for this development is crucial, which I will endeavour to...

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Long-form Tableau Visualisations - The New Normal?

I've never made it a secret. I'm by and large against the principle of long-form visualisations. My reasoning has been that while they're very useful to simply scroll through as an image on a mobile, there's a lot to consume when viewed in...

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The Data School: 2 years on

This post was originally published on The Information Lab: https://www.theinformationlab.co.uk/2017/06/23/data-school-2-years/ On the 23rd of June 2015, there was a spark in Central London. And two years later, this spark is now a...

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The Data School; 2 years on.

On the 23rd of June 2015, there was a spark in Central London. And two years later, this spark is now a burning flame, which has been a roaring success. I am, of course, talking about the Data School. An idea started by Tom Brown, Craig...

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Iron Viz Europe: Changing Demographics Across Europe

6 days ago, I tweeted out this picture of my work-in-progress dashboard. Below, is my narrative on how it was built.Iron Viz season is well, well, well underway. For the first time, Tableau Public are running Iron Viz Europe - Think #TheBigOne,...

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Organising Data Projects - Intro, Folders and Files.

Working as a consulting analyst, I often find myself being brought into projects where at various stages of the process - the best, of course, is to be a part of the pre-process discussions, allowing for conversations on the data, the structure...

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Iron Viz: Geospatial Contest - National Parks in the UK

There's nothing overly special about my Iron Viz entry. Iron Viz actually is one of the biggest stones I tripped over to find myself within the realms of Tableau, Alteryx and eventually, the Data School UK. Entries from Neil Charles, Steve...

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QS3 - Sleeping in December

For the month of December, I looked at my sleeping patterns. Since about November 2015, I've worn a Fitbit most days. I own a Fitbit HR, so my sleep is automatically logged. Now, one small thing that annoys me about Fitbit - actually, it's...

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Fair, or Foul?

Referees have a damn hard job in football, and the last few weeks, with Mike Dean being "demoted" (how does this even work? how is working in a similar environment, with perhaps more incidents per game in the Championship work? why is this...

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