Dear Analyst

Dear Analyst #134: How Stephen Follows used AI to decode the Oscars and film data to debunk the film industry

Ever wondered if Hollywood’s magic is just smoke and mirrors, or if there’s actually some cold, hard data behind those blockbuster hits? I sat down with Stephen Follows,

Dear Analyst #133: Find or check if a cell contains text from a list of values or partial matching text in a list (3 methods)

There are times when a problem nags at you like a pebble in your shoe. Even when you’re not working on the problem itself, you’re thinking about the problem which make it

Dear Analyst #132: How the semantic layer translates your physical data into user-centric business data with Frances O’Rafferty

When you think of your data warehouse, the “semantic layer” may not be the first thing that pops in your mind. Prior to reading Frances O’Rafferty‘s blog post on this top

Dear Analyst #131: Key insights and best practices from writing SQL for 15+ years with Ergest Xheblati

If you could only learn one programming language for the rest of your career, what would be it be? You could Google the most popular programming languages and just pick t

Dear Analyst #130: What happens when we rely too much on Excel spreadsheets and shadow IT takes over?

This is a replay of an episode from the Make Sense podcast with Lindsay Tabas. In the 1990s, large enterprises typically bought software in a tops-down approach. IT teams

Dear Analyst #129: How to scale self-serve analytics tools to thousands of users at Datadog with Jean-Mathieu Saponaro

When you’re organization is small, a centralized data team can take care of all the internal data tooling, reporting, and requests for all departments. As the team grows

Dear Analyst #128: What is citizen development and how to build solutions with spreadsheets?

This is a replay of an episode from the Citizen Development Live podcast with Neil Miller. Citizen development is a relatively new term I learned about a year ago or so.

Dear Analyst #127: Spreadsheets vs. Jira: Which one is better for your team?

I wasn’t sure if this topic should be it’s own episode but it’s been on my mind ever since I came back from Atlassian Team ’24 (Atlassian’s annual conference). At the con

Dear Analyst #126: How to data storytelling and create amazing data visualizations with Amanda Makulec

With an undergraduate degree in zoology and a master’s in public health, you wouldn’t expect Amanda Makulec to lead a successful career in data analytics and data visuali

Dear Analyst #125: How to identify Taylor Swift’s most underrated songs using data with Andrew Firriolo

Sometimes pop culture and data analysis meet and the result is something interesting, thought-provoking, and of course controversial. How can one use data to prove defini