Analytics mindset Viz-a-thon Introduction Tableau is one of the largest and most advanced companies in the data visualization industry (www.tableau.com). Each year, Tableau hosts a conference attended by thousands of users. As part of that conference, they conduct an “Iron Viz” competition. Contestants compete to make the best visualization within 20 minutes. The visualizations are judged by an expert panel and crowd voting. To see the remarkable visualizations of past winners, perform an internet search for the words Iron Viz winners. There are some amazing visualizations created at this competition in a short amount of time! For this case, you will compete in a similar competition, called Viz-a-thon. The purpose of this competition is to get you to think creatively and demonstrate your data visualization skills. In this case, you will be judged based on how you implement an analytics mindset. An analytics mindset is the ability to: ► Ask the right questions ► Extract, transform and load relevant data ► Apply appropriate data analytics techniques ► Interpret and share the results with stakeholders Setting Increasingly, globalization is an important issue faced by business professionals. Companies operate throughout the world and must understand the business environment in different cultures, regulatory regimes, markets, climates, etc. Businesses must make many decisions about how to operate in the global economy, such as where they should locate facilities, to whom should they sell their goods, whom should they hire, etc. However, at the heart of any of global decisions is the question: where is the best place in the world to do business? This is the high-level question that you will answer in this case. This question is meant as a starting place, and you will not be able to answer this question in its entirety for this case. Instead, you will start by thinking about this high-level question, then narrow down your thoughts until you generate a question that is more manageable to answer. After you have developed a more specific question, use data and visualizations to provide convincing evidence that addresses this specific question. To help illustrate, consider the following example: While there are many motives for doing business, one motive may be to help improve society, especially for those who struggle economically. A business may have a goal to employ people in poor countries in an effort to help improve their lives. Thus, a possible question that addresses the best place in the world to do business considering a motive of helping improve economically disadvantaged members of society would be: which countries have the poorest working class in the world? Poor could be interpreted in several ways, such as who makes the least amount of money, or who has the worst living conditions. The final deliverable could be a visualization dashboard that Analytics mindset case studies – Viz-a-thon © 2017 Ernst & Young Foundation (US). All Rights Reserved. SCORE No. 01774-171US 1 compares countries using these different types of metrics and supports a recommendation for the best country in which to do business. This is only meant as an example. Part of the purpose of this case is for you to ask the right questions and generate a creative solution. Data You can access any data you want for this case. To facilitate your data search, one highly recommended website for this case is http://www.doingbusiness.org/. Doing Business is part of the World Bank Group. Doing Business started in 2002 to provide data about domestic small and medium-size companies in countries throughout the world. The website measures the regulations that apply to these types of companies throughout their life cycle. As explained on the website, “By gathering and analyzing comprehensive quantitative data to compare business regulation environments across economies and over time, Doing Business encourages economies to compete towards more efficient regulation; offers measurable benchmarks for reform; and serves as a resource for academics, journalists, private sector researchers and others interested in the business climate of each economy.” 1 Doing Business provides various reports about business in countries throughout the world. For this case, the most useful thing Doing Business provides is free historical data sets for download. These can be accessed at http://www.doingbusiness.org/Custom-Query. You can download data for various economies, choose different topics and select the years for download. Discussion of what data is collected and how it is collected is available at http://www.doingbusiness.org/about-us/faq. Make sure you understand the data well enough that you can appropriately discuss and interpret your findings for your audience. Additional details about how to use the custom query at Doing Business is provided in the appendix. Applying the analytics mindset See the helpful hints listed below to think about applying the analytics mindset to this case. ► Ask the right questions. – Part of generating your questions is to narrow the scope of your investigation. Do not be tempted to think too broadly for this case. It is better to think of a narrow question and answer it well than to provide little insight about a broad question. – To narrow the question, you can change the question however you want. Consider the following ways of limiting the scope or your investigation. ► Limit the number of countries or regions you examine. ► Focus on one or two topics, rather than many topics. ► Consider how many years you examine. If you want to look at things over time, limit the number of items you examine. If you are more interested in looking at several factors, reduce the number of years you examine. – 1 Limiting the scope of your question will help you be efficient as you complete this case. This case could take weeks and months to answer. You are expected to spend approximately two to three hours to provide a complete solution. “About,” Doing Business website, www.doingbusiness.org/about-us, accessed April 14, 2017. Analytics mindset case studies – Viz-a-thon © 2017 Ernst & Young Foundation (US). All Rights Reserved. SCORE No. 01774-171US 2 ► Extract, transform and load relevant data. – Spend time to understand the data. Rather than rush in and start making visualizations, spend some time reading what data is available and what each data item means. ► Apply appropriate data analytics techniques. – Think about what type of analysis will best utilize the data and provide the best insights to inform your question. ► Interpret and share the results with stakeholders. – More is not always better. Simple visualizations often are more effective than cluttered, complex visualizations. Do not put too much information in a single visualization and dashboard. – Make sure you list your question somewhere on the visualization. That is, the user should know what they are looking at and why. Required Each individual will be required to complete a dashboard and a memo: Dashboard You should prepare your dashboard before class using Tableau. You will present your dashboard for a maximum of four minutes to a small group in class. In the presentation you should: ► Explain your specific question (30 seconds or less) ► Demonstrate an overview about how your visualization answers this question (one minute) ► Provide an in-depth discussion of one interesting aspect of your visualization (two minutes), which may be demonstrating something unique you did to the data, or a calculation or graphic that you made ► Include a brief conclusion (30 seconds or less) Remember that good visualizations largely answer the points listed above without much explanation. If you design your visualization effectively, your listeners should quickly grasp what you are trying to convey and be able to interpret the results without a lot of discussion. Memo You should prepare a short memo that addresses the following points: ► What was the specific question you addressed? ► Provide a detailed definition of the extract, transform and load process you used. – What data did you use (provide enough description so your data extraction can be replicated, e.g., consider including a screenshot of your joins)? – Where did you obtain the data (e.g., provide links to websites for all data you used)? – Did you transform the data in any way? – Provide any other pertinent information about the data. ► Briefly summarize what you learned and your answer to the question you asked. Analytics mindset case studies – Viz-a-thon © 2017 Ernst & Young Foundation (US). All Rights Reserved. SCORE No. 01774-171US 3 Your individual presentation and memo will be graded based on how well you implemented an analytics mindset, including: ► Did you ask an interesting and insightful question? ► Did you appropriately extract, transform and load relevant data? ► Did you apply appropriate data analytics techniques? ► Are your deliverables understandable, useful and effectively answer your question? Viz-a-thon champion After each individual presents their visualization within their group, the group will vote on the best visualization. The designer of the best visualization from each group then will make a four-minute presentation to the class. The class will vote and the winner being crowned as the class Viz-a-thon champion! Analytics mindset case studies – Viz-a-thon © 2017 Ernst & Young Foundation (US). All Rights Reserved. SCORE No. 01774-171US 4 Appendix To download data from Doing Business, go to http://www.doingbusiness.org/Custom-Query. From this screen, select which data you want for: 1. Choose economies 2. Choose topics 3. Which data years do you wish to display? Once you have made your selections, click the create report button at the bottom of the screen. The data will be loaded on the screen. Your output will look something like this. To get the data in a more useful format (e.g., Excel), click the download arrow (circled above in red and highlighted by a red arrow). This will download an Excel file that you can import into Tableau for analysis. As described on the website, the data is from “Surveys … administered through more than 12,500 local experts, including lawyers, business consultants, accountants, freight forwarders, government officials and other professionals routinely administering or advising on legal and regulatory requirements.” 2 The data relates to primarly two factors: (1) the complexity and cost of the regulatory processes and (2) laws and regulations in each economy. Discussions about the specific measures are listed on the FAQ page, which can be opened by clicking on the area under the “Topic Specific Questions” heading on the top right side of the page (http://www.doingbusiness.org/about-us/faq). These pages provide detailed descriptions of each data item to aid in your understanding. 2 “FAQ,” Doing Business website, www.doingbusiness.org/about-us/faq, accessed April 14, 2017. Analytics mindset case studies – Viz-a-thon © 2017 Ernst & Young Foundation (US). All Rights Reserved. SCORE No. 01774-171US 1
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