SPUG: Fwd: Extended Tableau Trial Now Available

[Michael R. Wolf]

On Feb 20, 2009, at 11:50 AM, Ted Larson Freeman wrote:

> Thanks, Michael. I hadn't heard of this product before.
>
> There are many reasons that people who do data analysis for a living
> choose a tool that was designed for that purpose. Perl is simply not
> in that product space. As just one example, the R environment has
> become a standard in the statistics community because it provides both
> a powerful programming language and excellent graphics. Creating heat
> maps is simple in R.


There's a LOT to be said for "the right tool for the job".  Boy is it  
hard to know all the tools to pick the right one!!!

While at AT&T Bell Labs, I used S, the precursor to both S-Plus (a  
commercial tool provided by a Seattle company - see insightful.com)  
and R (the Open Source act-alike).  I used S to create topo maps of my  
floors as support for a homeowner warranty claim against a builder for  
his negligence.  (Because the topo maps were of a *floor*, they should  
have been trivial.  They were not!!!)  It was a great tool for doing  
some analysis, and ultimately printing some nice perspective maps to  
show why folks tripped in certain spots where poor construction  
techniques had created ridges, valleys, and "speed bumps".

Michael

P.S.  The founders of Tableau Software hail from Stanford.  It was a  
research project similar to Google -- similar time frame and "right  
down the hall".  The tool has some good academic/entrapeneural   
provenance.

-- 
Michael R. Wolf
     All mammals learn by playing!
         MichaelRWolf at att.net