Citizen Data Scientists: 7 Ways To Harness Talent Posted on : Jul 29 - 2015

A new role is emerging to deal with the ongoing shortage of data scientists. Learn more about these new power users and find out how organizations can cultivate more of them.

Explain Data Visualizations

Data visualizations are becoming more sophisticated to accommodate increasingly complex data. Some people misinterpret or don't understand certain types of data visualizations because they lack the knowledge to understand them, or because their minds comprehend other types of data visualizations better than the ones that have been presented. Analytics vendors provide a variety of data visualization options to accommodate the differences in datasets, the type of analysis being done, individual perceptions, and the need to verify results.

'Data visualizations are an improvement over tables and lists, but they can obscure what's really significant, or what's really causation or not,' Sallam said. 'Someone looking at a data visualization created by a business analyst or data scientist may not really have the skills to fully interpret a complex chart or even a basic chart. Even the meaning of bar charts and pie charts isn't necessarily clear to everyone.'

If the goal of data discovery is to expand insights to the maximum number of people in an enterprise to drive value, then it is important to make sure that a broader audience can more accurately interpret the data visualizations that are presented to them. Adding simple narratives can help improve insight and comprehension.  View more