Data Gems

I’ve been spending more and more of my time looking at all the data I have surrounding my life and my business. Its interesting to see whats going on at a very granular level, and then zoom out and see the forest itself.

Its also intriguing to see how other people use data. Some people use charts and graphs to tell a story that doesn’t necessarily play out with a closer look, while others take a close look and find something you wouldn’t necessarily see on the surface of the data.

Take for instance Business Insider’s Chart of the Day , they have all sorts of interesting charts compiled from all over the web. Sometimes they are completely outrageous, sometimes they are insightful (mostly they are just charts though). What is interesting is how the headline of the Chart often varies from the data in the Chart. Take this for example:

Yes the people who don't want one doubled, but the people who do want one tripled

Yes, the percentage of people who don’t want one doubled, but the percentage of people who “would like to buy one” tripled, and the percent of people who replied “No, I’m not interested” was cut in half.

Charts are fun ways to take a snapshot of some set of data and to quickly illustrate a point. But is really interesting to see what kind of crazy stuff comes out of the data, not the parts that complement the story you are telling, but the data points you had no idea you’d find.

Look at this chart comparing the last 4 weeks of traffic on one of our sites. The chart covers the exact same days of the week, from a year ago in January. There are no significant events that would drive traffic, other than a slight spike at the end from Valentines Day searches.

Look how each day lines up, fascinating to me

Look how the trend of the days of the week follows so precisely. The first thing I saw when I looked at this chart was the fact that we are down about 7% y-o-y, but then I looked closer and saw the parallel movement across the chart. Look how the dips correlate, and the spikes match up. I’m now intrigued enough to put together a chart of all the data from all our sites and see how this matches up.

I’m not sure what to takeaway from this type of find, but if you just look at the headline, you miss the real gems.