SPUG: Fwd: Extended Tableau Trial Now Available

[Ted Larson Freeman]

Absolutely. Choosing Perl for data analysis tasks such as making heat
maps would be like choosing assembly language to write a web services
framework.

Ted

On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Michael R. Wolf <michaelrwolf at att.net> wrote:
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> 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
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