@dmgerbino

Data Visualization Done Right by The New York Times

Mon, 10 May 2010 10:30:00 -0400

The New York Times is known for its good use of data visualization. It is also known for its bad uses as well ( see my blog post from September 8, 2009 ).

The May 7, 2010 New York Times article, “British Parties Jockey to Form Governing Alliance,” by John F. Burns had an impressive use of data visualization. The following chart utilized Stephen Few’s Bullet Graph technique to describe Parliament election results.

Stephen Few developed the bullet graph specifically for use in business dashboards as a means to solve the data visualization problems caused by gauges and meters. Since that time, his original specification and use case has been expanded. His website maintains the bullet graph specification document. He last updated his specification in March 2010. In its simplest form, a bullet chart is a bar chart inside another bar chart. This binomial comparison works very well for visually analyzing the results of the British parliamentary election results. At a glance, each bullet graph easily compares the new parliament vs the outgoing parliament seats in four categories. It is easy to see the labour party lost seats, the conservatives gained seats and that the liberal democrats and other parties basically maintained their seats. The graph also has a vertical line representing the number of seats needed to gain a majority. This is another part of the bullet graph specification used for encoding a comparative measure. In this case, the point where a majority is achieved. With this added element it is easy to see the labour party lost its majority and that the conservatives came very close to getting a majority.

Conclusion: The use of a dashboard graph type by the New York Times added simple clarity to the data in the underlying story. This is an example of data visualization done right.

For further information I strongly urge you to read the full bullet graph specification. The image below is from the latest version with all components identified.

@dmgerbino

EagerEyes Shorts: Keep Your Org-Chart to Yourself!

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:05:52 -0400

EagerEyes Shorts: Keep Your Org-Chart to Yourself!:

EagerEyes makes an interesting point on his post from a week ago. He struggled looking for information while using a corporate website. I agree with most of what he is saying. When corporations publish websites, they need to know who there audience is. If they intend to communicate to multiple audiences, i.e. customers, vendors, shareholders, etc., companies should default their websites to the most common use. At least that is my opinion. Here is what EagerEyes, Assistant Professor Robert Kosara, has to say about the subject.

I was looking for Kaiser Fung’s Numbers Rule Your World on Amazon, and saw that there was no Kindle version. So I figured I’d check with the publisher, McGraw-Hill, if there was perhaps some other kind of e-book (like O’Reilly has for most of its titles).

Googling for the name McGraw-Hill… click here for the rest of the post

HSBC admits huge Swiss bank data theft

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:00:00 -0400

Thursday, 11 March 2010 - BBC News

About 24,000 clients of HSBC’s private banking operation in Switzerland had personal details stolen by a former employee, the company has admitted.

In December, HSBC said that just 10 account holders were affected by the theft, which happened three years ago.

The information stolen concerns 15,000 accounts that are still active. Another 9,000 accounts have been closed since the theft.

HSBC says that it does not think the data can be used to access accounts.

Read the rest at the BBC News.

After reading this article I was simply amazed. HSBC first learned of the breach in December 2008. That’s 2008! And, it took prosecutors to let them know how bad it really was. If you would like to read more about this story, follow this Google link for “HSBC Data Breach.”

@dmgerbino

Google Releases API for Cool Visualization of Data Mashups from Many Sources via ReadWriteWeb

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:52:08 -0500

Google Releases API for Cool Visualization of Data Mashups from Many Sources via ReadWriteWeb:

Jolie O’Dell’s December 14, 2009 ReadWriteWeb article starts: “A recently released Google Labs product called Fusion Tables allowed users to grab data from spreadsheets, text documents, PDFs and other sources and create compelling, comprehensive visualizations from a merged data set.”

This announcement ushers in a new era where a SQL like language allows analysts to create new types of data visualizations that will lead to dynamic interpretations of data sets that was not easily possible before. It even incorporates the ability for groups to work on data sets.

This is an exciting announcement from Google.

@dmgerbino

18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0400

18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer:

This Mashable.com post from October 13 features a plethora of Word of Mouth Marketing tools. I currently use many of them and this handy resource gives me a few new ones to test. My favorite two tools are Google Alerts and Hootsuite. Every marketer, business owner, sales person, etc. should investigate as many of these tools as possible. Also, do not forget Andy Sernovitz’s Word of Mouth Marketing Bible - mashable:

Clay McDaniel is the principal and co-founder of social media marketing agency, Spring Creek Group. Find him via @springcreekgrp on Twitter.

By now, most consumer marketers…

Customer Advocacy Questions - From Ron Shevlin's Marketing Tea Party

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0400

Customer Advocacy Questions - From Ron Shevlin's Marketing Tea Party:

Ron Shevlin rips apart customer advocacy measurement and adds his opinion as to what information should be captured. This is a good topic for discussion. I hope you comment and discuss as did I.

I look forward to reading your comments on Ron’s Marketing Tea Party blog.

Bad Data Visualization - Surprise, it's Pie

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:06:00 -0400

The New York Times Saturday, September 5, Op-Ed features a piece by Charles M. Blow titled “The Prince of Dispassion.” Among other things, it includes his opinion regarding a CBS News Poll about health care reform (press release PDF here). I found the data visualization used by The New York Times to be egregious. The data visualization’s rough measurements on the page was just under 11 inches high and approximately 3 1/2 inches wide. More simply, the data visualization is 66% of the space of the Op-Ed piece. That is huge. Below is the image that is available on the New York Times website.

The CBS press release showed the data simply, clearly and without fanfare as a data table. As seen below, it is compact and easier to read.

I would have preferred the Op-Ed piece to have had the original data table. This would have left a lot of room for Charles Blow to expand his commentary. Opinions in a newspaper are words and not huge charts. It would have been much better if the piece was 85% - 95% text and the rest supporitng tables or proper data visualizations.

Improving Your Bank Efficiency Ratio - Part 1

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 11:00:00 -0500

One of the ratios closely watched in the banking community is the efficiency ratio. The efficiency ratio is defined as Non-Interest Expense divided by the sum of Net Interest Income and Non-Interest Income. The lower the ratio the better.

An example of efficiency ratio from Wikipedia is as follows:

“If expenses are $40 and revenue is $80 (perhaps net of interest revenue/expense) the efficiency ratio is 0.5 or 50% (40/80). Efficiency ratio is essentially how much you spend to make a dollar. In the above example, they spent $0.50 for every dollar they earned in revenue.”

In today’s down economy, companies are laying off employees and budgets are being cut. These are expense saves and many companies try to improve their efficiency ratio by way of expense saves. I am all for reducing wasteful spending, but now is the time to sell. The turmoil with the big money center banks is perfect for all us community banks to take business away from the big banks.

So what is the plan? Let’s keep it simple. We should all do the following:

Protect your existing customer base. Make sure you know who your best customers are and keep them happy. These are not just your most profitable customers but also your champions, those customers that like to talk about you and refer you to others.
Increase your service and products per household. Do you know how many of your customers only have savings products and no checking products? How many checking customers who have no savings products? Customers with out debit cards or not using their debit card? What about internet banking, bill pay, direct deposit, eStatement status? All these products and services add spread income, non-interest fee income, reduce expense and affect the customer life time value.
Focus on acquiring deposit rich customers. A simple segmentation strategy within small business and retail markets that focuses on high average non-interest deposits should be your focus.

These simple strategic steps will have a far greater effect on lowering your efficiency ratio than cutting expenses. They will also improve your bank’s profitability.

The ideas above are a simple broad stroke of what can be done simply. Each institution has its own capabilities to refine further for efficiency and maximum impact.

What are your thoughts?

Part 2 of this series will further explore protecting your existing customer base.

New York Times Home Delivery Issues

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:58:00 -0400

I told many people about my New York Times #NYT delivery guy waking me up Sunday morning at 6:45am by using the door knocker until I woke up.

Everyone I told, thought the delivery guy was nuts for doing that. I am glad I reported the behavior to the NYT customer care center.

Why did the NYT home delivery guy wake me up? Because I dared to call and complain that for two Saturdays in a row, I only got the Sunday advance sections and no Saturday paper. I really liked the New York Times customer service reps comments about the home delivery guy waking me up by saying he is not supposed to do that. DUH!

New York Times Home Delivery = Fail

New York Times Customer Service = Pass

@dmgerbino

Person 2 Person Lending - P2P

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:31:00 -0400

Person 2 Person Lending - P2P:

Mashable.com published an article this afteroon titled, “5 Ways to Lend Online”. It still amazes me how many people in banking have never heard of person 2 person lending, a disruptive lending practice dating back to at least the summer of 2005. In the summer of 2005 Zopa.com started in the United Kingdom. I first became aware of P2P lending in February of 2006 when I read Interview with P2P Lender Prosper’s Chris Larsen By Jim Bruene of NetBanker.com. Ever since then I have continue to read and study these new services. When I would discuss this with bankers I would get comments like only people who we do not lend to would use this kind of service or businesses would never use something like this. Well they were wrong on both accounts. People with great credit are using these services as are small businesses.

This type of lending will start to affect banks and credit unions. The volume is still small but it is growing so we do need to watch. If you are curious about some of the current statisrtics regarding P2P lending you can read the First Quarter 2008 results for Prosper and LendingClub courtesy of NetBanker.

Save the Pies for Desert

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:01:00 -0400

Save the Pies for Desert:

I have never understood the wide use of pie charts. Through most of my 20+ year career I have done my best to avoid them, only giving in to senior management when I knew it is a losing battle. Early in my career, I did use pie charts. What led me to stop using them was how they distorted the data or how the visual relationships were misread. I must admit, there is one perfect pie chart and it can be seen below. The main link to this post titled “Save the Pies for Desert”, was published by Data Visualization expert Stephen Few in July/August 2007. This and other articles can be found in the library section of his perceptualedge.com web site.