In last week’s article we discussed five diverse characters in television and film that didn’t necessarily fit Hollywood’s stereotype of what a data scientist looks and acts like. While many hacker and data analyst roles are portrayed by white actors and actresses who are nerdy and/or computer geniuses that’s not the case in everyday society. The data industry is made up of men and women of all different races, ethnicities, and sexualities, so today we are continuing to celebrate characters that don’t fit Hollywood’s typical mold.

Can predictive analytics be used to forecast which movie will walk away with the top honor at the Academy Awards? Apparently not. While predictive analytics is useful to forecast future trends, behaviors and patterns- Oscar winners are not one of them. Often times it is used to lower risks, improve software or anticipate customer behavior. Combined with machine learning and algorithms, predictive analytics incorporate past and current data to provide the most logical conclusion.

Does your company have a low business intelligence (BI) and analytics maturity? According to an article published by Gartner earlier this month, there is an 87% chance that it does. The article entitled, “Organizations Have Low BI and Analytics Maturity”; Gartner investigates why so many companies have a limited BI maturity while including four different approaches to improve it.

Tableau’s 11^th Annual Conference concluded another successful conference at the end of October in New Orleans. Attendees got to attend data inspired break-out sessions, Tableau training, as well as networking events. One of the main events was the Iron Viz Championship – a competition between three finalists armed with a dataset and tasked with making the best visualization. Did I mention it was all in front of a live audience? I got to talk to 2018’s Iron Viz Champion, Timothy Vermeiren and asked him more about the championship and why he thinks data visualization is so important.