Talk Like a Pirate Day

YAARRR 


'tis truly a glorious daaay, fer it be Talk Like a Pirate Day! 
May yer ships foil the Krakken, and yer hulls be filled wit' Boooteh!


http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html


(This roughly translates to "Hi Guys, hope you're all having a nice weekend, and the assignment is going well!)


Cheers,
Reza

The Monash DSS Laboratory Twitter Feed

For those of you who tweet or have an RSS feed reader, you might like to follow the Monash DSS Laboratory twitter feed (http://twitter.com/dsslab). The DSS Lab is a group of researchers (including yours truly) and research students looking at decision support, business intelligence and data warehousing. The feed will include updates on new posts to the Monash BI Blog, interesting news and notification of events. You can use it to stay in touch with the teaching staff, or to keep in touch once you graduate.

Pie Charts: "Defeat in Circular Form"

Building decision support systems nearly always involves the visual presentation of information, so knowing what works and what doesn't from a data visualisation perspective is important.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that pie charts are bad, mmkay? Here's a post from the excellent blog of business intelligence consultancy Juice Analytics describing some of the reasons why pie charts suck hard.

Also see this, this and this (all via the boys at Juice).

Assignment 1 Submission - Reza's Students

Hi Guys,

For all my students trying to get their Assignment 1 in to me today, here are your options:

1- You should be attending the tutorial and handing it to me.
2- If you miss your tutorial, I will be in G109 till around 6PM today, so come and find me, and I will still take your submission.
3- If you miss me today, then come in tomorrow and hand it in to the Faculty front desk, and they will stamp it and place it in the Unit box.
4- If you have grounds for special consideration, you MUST seek approval from Rob Meredith, and provide necessary documentation to him.

5% penalty applies per day for late submissions.
Do NOT forget a signed assignment coversheet.

Good Luck
Reza

Atomic Unlocked 2010

Hi Guys,

For the geeks in our unit (myself included), here is a nice little event coming up @ Monash next month:

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/unlocked/

Cheers,
Reza

Data Visualisation for Decision Support

As Reza posted down below, the term 'DSS' encompasses a wide range of systems, from small throw-away spreadsheets to large enterprise-scale reporting systems. The one thing they all have in common is that they help people answer questions through the collation and presentation of information.

The field of data visualisation deals with the graphical presentation of information, and while we're all familiar with pie charts and other graphs, data visualisation experts can help tell a story with data in a range of ways. DSS developers need to be familiar with data visualisation concepts: what works, what doesn't work and the idea that data isn't just a thing, it's the building blocks we use to understand a problem better and identify solutions.

People like Edward Tufte and Stephen Few are well know experts in the field, but a presentation by Hans Rosling a couple of years ago set the field on fire with his innovative data presentation techniques:

Cheers,

Rob.

Pre - Assignment 1 Podcast

Hi Guys,

Please have a quick listen to the podcast Rob, Pam and I did on Friday for you:

http://podcast.infotech.monash.edu.au/fit2011/?p=episode&name=2010-08-30_episode_7.mp3

It should hold some helpful advice for completing the assignment.

Good luck,
Reza