Data Visualization: Achieving Quality at the End of the Data-to-Information Life Cycle
Please join us for a presentation from Michael Scofield, an information architect for a major U.S. financial services company!
Data goes through many steps before it becomes information whose ultimate value is realized when supporting major decisions by managers and executives. How that information is finally computed and presented contains significant quality issues. Decision-makers don’t want to worry about granularity of data, or how it is integrated, or how it is aggregated and transformed into information. They also are not interested in the various “qualifications” of information expression (all the stuff which should be placed in footnotes), even though they should understand (as Deming put it) the “weaknesses of the data”. But professional competence demands that we tell them enough to not miss-use the data. Then, we must express it in ways which are not misleading.
Graphical expression is almost always more understandable than tabular. But it must be expressed clearly, and in the cultural context of the readers, users, and decision-makers.
Data management and DQ professionals are also, in one sense, “business users” of data, and thus can also benefit from good data visualization techniques.
This presentation includes a rogue’s gallery of really bad charts; we will discuss why they are bad, and how they can be improved.
Michael Scofield is an information architect for a major U.S. financial services company. He holds an adjunct faculty position at Loma Linda University in the Department of Health Information Management. He a frequent speaker on topics of data quality, semantic data integration, data visualization, and data warehousing. He has spoken to over 24 DAMA chapters in the U.S., eleven DAMA-International conferences, DAMA conferences in London and Australia. He also speaks to numerous other professional groups including Oracle User Groups, American Society of Quality, information quality conferences, The Data Warehousing Institute, Institute of Internal Auditors, Assn. of Government Accountants, and Quality Assurance Association chapters. He also speaks widely to general audiences on topics of the succession to the English monarchy, satellite imagery, the influence of digital technology upon society, and related topics. He also has humor published in the L.A. Times and other journals.
