Death of the Star Schema?

by Tom Gleeson of Gobán Saor

With the release of the next version of PowerPivot (Microsoft) around the corner (mid March I think), I’ve been re-acquainting myself with its new features. Most of the current version’s annoyances have been remedied (no drill-thru, no hierarchy support for example); and the additional enhancements to the DAX language (crossjoins, alternate relationships etc) make modeling most any problem possible (and generally easy).

Death of a Star

The more I come to know PowerPivot, the more I believe that modeled data warehouses' days are numbered. I didn’t say data warehouses per se, rather those that attempt to centrally model end user reporting structures (usually as star-schemas).

There will continue to be a need for centrally controlled data warehouses (or at least simplified data views (and/or copies) of operational datasets, either provided by system vendors of by in-house IT) to bridge the raw-to-actionable data gap. But I suspect the emphasis will change from providing finished goods to providing semi-processed raw materials.

So, will the star-schema become redundant? No, as it’s still a valid method of modelling a reporting requirement in order to make many queries simpler to phrase (this obviously applies to SQL , but also to DAX queries). But, those who build them will be doing so closer to the problem at hand, and specific to that problem (I’ve discussed this before in Slowly Changing Dimensions: Time to Stop Worrying).

For many reports the barely modified operational data model will be all that’s required (for example, DAX doesn’t require “fact” header/detail tables to be flattened to detail level, as would be the case with a classic star).

“Good Enough” models will become the norm; classic “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know” centralised models a luxury for most (especially as such models tend to “age” very quickly).

If you’re about to invest or re-furbish your data warehouse or your reporting data sub-systems, don’t do so without first taking a serious look at PowerPivot. This is a game-changer, not just for full-stack Microsoft BI shops, but for any business that finds that their reporting datasets invariably end-up in Excel.

If you need any help evaluating PowerPivot or modeling your reporting needs in PowerPivot, I’m for hire.

Source: Gleeson, T (2012, January 19), Death of the Star Schema? Gobán Saor.

Republished with kind permission of Tom Gleeson of Gobán Saor

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The End of Football in America

Tyler Cowen and Kevin Grier of Grantland make an interesting case for the end of football in America:

The most plausible route to the death of football starts with liability suits. Precollegiate football is already sustaining 90,000 or more concussions each year. If ex-players start winning judgments, insurance companies might cease to insure colleges and high schools against football-related lawsuits. Coaches, team physicians, and referees would become increasingly nervous about their financial exposure in our litigious society. If you are coaching a high school football team, or refereeing a game as a volunteer, it is sobering to think that you could be hit with a $2 million lawsuit at any point in time. A lot of people will see it as easier to just stay away. More and more modern parents will keep their kids out of playing football, and there tends to be a "contagion effect" with such decisions; once some parents have second thoughts, many others follow suit. We have seen such domino effects with the risks of smoking or driving without seatbelts, two unsafe practices that were common in the 1960s but are much rarer today. The end result is that the NFL's feeder system would dry up and advertisers and networks would shy away from associating with the league, owing to adverse publicity and some chance of being named as co-defendants in future lawsuits.

Of course, football is a "too big to fail" business in America, so I anticipate that some sort of government subsidized insurance solution will soon be forthcoming.

Photo from The Sports Doc Chalk Talk

Source: Cowen, T & Grier, K (2012, February 9), What Would the End of Football Look Like? Grantland.

Mathematics, Problem-Solving, and Critical Thinking

The following is extracted from a speech presented by Grace Fu to winners of the Singapore Mathematical Society's Annual Prize Presentation Ceremony in 2008:

Mathematics will imbue you with problem-solving skills such as the ability to understand a problem, identify the relevant information, look for relationships and patterns, make your own conjectures and apply mathematical knowledge and tools to solve or prove them. Mathematics, thus, provides good opportunities for the training of the mind to think critically and adapt to new situations, something that will be valuable to your future careers.

The words above are instructive for anyone seeking to join the ranks of analytics professionals worldwide. The ability to solve complex problems through critical thinking and reasoning is essential in today's analytics-based economy. Singapore is recognized around the world as a leader in the conceptual mathematics movement.

Grace Fu Hai Yien (Chinese: 傅海燕; pinyin: Fù Hǎiyiàn)

Source: Fu, G (2008), Speech at the Singapore Mathematical Society Annual Prize Presentation Ceremony.

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Conceptual Mathematics in Singapore

Conceptual Mathematics in Singapore

The arrival of conceptual mathematics as an alternative teaching approach to procedural mathematics is now taking the world by storm. The so-called "Singapore mathematics method," which emphasizes concept mastery and model drawing ahead of procedures, is the foundation for this new approach to teaching mathematics. Math in Focus (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) exemplifies how the Singaporean conceptual approach can bring mathematics education to life in the post-modern classroom.

Math in Focus is the US edition of Singapore's top-ranking math program. It follows the same scope, sequence, and pedagogy as its Singapore edition, My Pals are Here!, but has been enhanced with the addition of a robust Teacher's Edition, differentiation components, and interactive technology.... Math in Focus is published by Marshall Cavendish Education Singapore, the premier publisher of textbooks in Singapore, and distributed in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Both programs follow the pedagogical framework developed by the Singapore Ministry of Education: emphasizing concept mastery, a concrete-to-pictorial-to-abstract approach, metacognitive reasoning, and the use of model drawing to solve and justify problems.... Singapore math is more than isolated strategies and model-drawing techniques. It is a carefully sequenced curriculum that has led Singapore students to international success.... Math in Focus brings the authentic Singapore math pedagogy to US classrooms, and is aligned with Common Core State Standards. Math in Focus is the mastery program for world-class math instruction and results in the US.

Learn More

Singapore's Mathematics Framework [click to enlarge]

The emergence of robust enterprise analytics globally is both data and technologically driven, and will not be reversed. Our new analytics driven world will require conceptual agility that transcends procedural thinking from knowledge workers. Said another way, conceptual mathematics is more than a fad; conceptual mathematics and thinking are the future.

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From "Business Intelligence" to "Business Analytics"

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Analytics: Hotter Than Ever

Timo Elliott is predicting that 2012 will be the year that analytics takes the lead as a business driver in today's economy:

The real trend this year is not the technology. It’s about helping business people make better decisions, and actually change the way companies do business. Analytics has always been about transforming business, but the recent huge changes in analytic technology have created interesting new opportunities for business innovation....

In particular, companies want better visibility about what’s going on in their market, and increased organizational agility in order to be able to deal with change fast. It’s like driving in the fog without a map – in order to survive, you should invest in better visibility, brakes, and steering to be able to spot and avoid fast-moving objects looming out of the fog.

Analytics provides these capabilities: business intelligence to peer into the road ahead, risk-management to provide fast alerts to new obstacles, and flexible financial planning systems to help swerve around them....

Many companies are going beyond "just" improving their existing analytic capabilities, using analytics in new ways to change the way they do business. Instead of analytics being something that is used to monitor and eventually improve a business process, analytics is becoming a more fundamental part of the business process itself.

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Timo Elliott

Let's face it, analytics are hotter than ever, especially in today's competitive economy.

Source: Elliott, T (2012, February 10), 2012: The Year Analytics Means Business, Business Analytics.

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What is Smugness?

smug
adj
Exhibiting or feeling great or offensive satisfaction with oneself or with one's situation; self-righteously complacent: "the smug look of a toad breakfasting on fat marsh flies" (William Pearson).

smugly adv
smugness n

How we all tire of the smug in this world...

Source: The Free Dictionary

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Visualizing Human Migration Patterns

Even Westvang uses Deluge software to track the migrations of 300,000 Norwegians using individual tax filing data (which is public domain in Norway). The result is a visualization treat!



Imagine how this visualization technique might be applied to other data sets. Follow the links below to learn more about Even Westvang's work, Deluge, and how this visualization was produced.

Deluge by Even Westvang

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Design Your Own Profession

Prof Anne-Marie Slaughter offers the following sage advice to those just beginning their careers:

Forget the titles on the org charts and the advertised positions. Design your own profession and convince employers that you are exactly what they need... Define the functions you think they need and you can supply, and then apply for a corresponding position, whether or not they've created it yet.

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Prof Anne-Marie Slaughter (1958- )
Photo by PopTech

The professions of the future have yet to be defined...

Source: Slaughter, A-M (2011, December 22), Design Your Own Profession, Harvard Business Review Online.

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Small Business Owners' Views on Big Business Taxes

A recent small business owners' survey report published by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority (2012) concluded the following:

• Small business owners overwhelmingly believe big corporations use loopholes to avoid taxes that small businesses have to pay: A sweeping 90% believe this to be true; 92% say big corporations’ use of such loopholes is a problem.
• Nine out of 10 small business owners say U.S. multinational corporations using accounting loopholes to shift their U.S. profits to offshore subsidiaries to avoid taxes is a problem: 91% of respondents agreed it is a problem, with 55% saying it is a very serious problem.
• Majority of small business owners say their business is harmed when big corporations use loopholes to avoid taxes: Three-quarters of respondents agree that their small business is harmed when loopholes allow big corporations to avoid taxes. More than one-third say it harms their business a lot.
• Small business owners say big corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes: 67% believe big corporations pay less than their fair share of taxes. An even bigger majority, 73%, says multinational corporations pay less than their fair share.
• Small business owners say households making more than $1 million a year pay less than their fair share in taxes: 58% of owners say households whose annual income exceeds $1 million pay less than their fair share.
• Small business owners support a higher tax rate for individuals earning more than $1 million a year: 57% of respondents agree that individuals earning more than $1 million a year should pay a higher tax rate on the income over $1 million. Only one small business owner out of 500 polled reported their annual household income to be more than $1 million.
• Four out of five small business owners disapprove of the “carried interest” loophole that gives hedge fund managers a big break on their taxes: 81% of small business owners favor hedge fund managers paying taxes at the ordinary income tax rate, with a top bracket rate currently set at 35%, rather than the 15% capital gains rate—with 61% strongly supporting this change.
• A majority of small business owners believe Congress should let tax cuts expire on taxable household income exceeding $250,000 a year: 51% of respondents believe Congress should let tax cuts on taxable household income exceeding $250,000 a year expire (40% said they should be extended).
• Respondents in this scientific national survey were politically diverse, with a majority Republican or independent-leaning Republican: 50% identified as Republican (27%) or independent-leaning Republican (23%); 32% as Democrat (14%) or independent-leaning Democratic (18%); and 15% as independent.

Business interests in the US are clearly not defined homogenously. The emerging divide between small businesses and larger firms is becoming very real, at least in the minds of small business owners. Follow the link below to download the full report:

Download

Source: National Opinion Poll: Small Business Owners’ Views on Taxes and How to Level the Playing Field with Big Business (2012, February 6), American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, & Small Business Majority.

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Three Obstacles to Predictive Analytics

SimaFore cites three key obstacles that firms confront along the path to predictive analytics:

1. Lack of data maturity
2. Inadequate technology
3. Lack of executive support

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Multi-Monte Carlo Function in ModelRisk 4 Software (Vose)

Companies that are still not competing on analytics are behind the power curve. If any of the three conditions above are constraining predictive analytics at your firm, consider remedies.

Source: SimaFore (2012, February 2), 3 Reasons Why Predictive Analytics May NOT Benefit Your Business.

PS: ModelRisk 4 software is a product of Vose Software BVBA, Ghent, Belgium. Follow the link below to learn more:

ModelRisk 4

US Jobs Recovery Will Take Years

According to forecasts by the Hamilton Project, a full US jobs recovery will apparently take many years given that the US is currently creating approximately 200,000 new jobs per month.

When one considers that the US resident population is currently growing at approximately 250,000 new residents per month, the job growth reported above becomes irrelevant. Hence, job opportunities in the US will likely remain tight for many years into the future (and perhaps indefinitely).

My best advice for career seekers is to acquire world-class skills that sell at a premium in the global marketplace as early during your life as possible, and then to convert those skills into premium wages. Additionally, a significant portion of one's earnings should be invested into high quality long-term equities throughout one's life in order to build an estate that supports financial independence.

For those who choose instead to avoid skill acquisition and investment planning, life is likely to get much tougher in the coming years...

Source: Yglesias, M (2012, February 3), The Long Road to Full Employment, Slate.

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Stand-Up Meetings are the Future

Stand-up meetings are becoming the new norm in business. The advantages of stand-up meeetings become obvious when one considers how much time is generally wasted in sit-down meetings where participants can be half-asleep, engaged in text messaging, surfing the Internet, or even playing video games on mobile devices. Moreover, those who lead meetings are often verbose or follow tedious routines that lure attendees into inattentiveness.

Try juggling a notebook, pen, mobile phone, laptop, and a cup of coffee while standing and you will soon understand why stand-up meetings tend to be short and sweet. For many office workers, stand-up meetings are not simply a fad, but the future.

Source: Silverman, R E (2012, February 2), No More Angling for the Best Seat; More Meetings Are Stand-Up Jobs, Wall Street Journal Online.

US Employment to Population Ratio in Stagnation

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the US employment to population ratio* for January 2012 stood at 57.8%, down significantly from 58.5% the previous month, but up slightly from 57.6% a year ago. The US employment to population ratio has been trending downwards since 2000.

Many economists believe that reporting the number employed as a percentage of the civilian population provides a more accurate description of the current state of employment than conjecturing the number of "unemployed" in a population. The US employment to population ratio reached an historical peak of 64.4% on an annual basis in 2000.

*The BLS defines employment and population (civilian noninstitutional) as follows:

Employment consists of all persons who, during the reference week (the calendar week including the twelfth day of the month), (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees, worked in their own business or profession or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family, or (b) were not working but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs.... The civilian noninstitutional population consists of persons 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 States and the District of Columbia who are not inmates of institutions (for example, penal and mental facilities and homes for the aged) and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

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Richard Feynman: Imagining Electromagnetic Waves

Prof Richard Feynman on imagining electromagnetic waves:

I’ll tell you what I see. I see some kind of vague showy, wiggling lines — here and there an E and a B written on them somehow, and perhaps some of the lines have arrows on them — an arrow here or there which disappears when I look too closely at it. When I talk about the fields swishing through space, I have a terrible confusion between the symbols I use to describe the objects and the objects themselves. I cannot really make a picture that is even nearly like the true waves. So if you have difficulty making such a picture, you should not be worried that your difficulty is unusual.

Prof Richard Phillips Feynman (1918-1988)

Source: Feynman, R P, Leighton, R , & Sands, M (2011), The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol II, New York: Basic Books.

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