Blog - Viable Insights

Perfect datasets don’t exist but cool tools do. Here are two I use.

Apr 18th, 2017

One component of my day-to-day is retrieving reports and turning them into something useful. Simple, right? Ha! I bet you laughed, too. Data comes in all shapes and sizes…in fact, it usually comes in every form besides the one we need. As data scientists, our job isn’t only to interpret the data and provide someone … more »

I stopped blaming Excel for my basic data visualizations. Here’s when and why.

Apr 4th, 2017

Early last year I realized my research findings only meant something if I involved the right people. And, to do so required me to be a creative and adaptive evaluator. Around the same time, I realized that I could have all the answers, but without a good way to communicate them, no one would actually notice. I started searching for solutions. … more »

Basic to bomb column charts.

Apr 3rd, 2017

Let’s take a quick look at how a basic column chart in Excel can be turned into something you might want to look at. Enter your data into Excel Insert a column chart (if you’re basic, save and close here…) Oh, good! You’re ready for more. Okay, here it goes: Get rid of that white … more »

Can we talk about logic models?

Jan 16th, 2017

Over a year ago I had the pleasure of co-presenting on logic models to a group of individuals from non-profit organizations. The presentation included time to discuss the pros and cons of the logic model. This really gave my team and I the ability to work through the problems with the attendees. The most voiced … more »