September 2005

Cognos and Freakonomics

While working at Onyx Software in 2001-2003 I had the chance to work with the Cognos product line quite a bit. I particularly enjoyed their OLAP application called PowerPlay. It essentially allows you to analyze information in a very intuitive way and discover trends and other factors in data that would otherwise be extremely difficult to achieve.

With Cognos, I got into the frame of mind of asking questions that the data might be able to reveal. Some were obvious, such as "who were the top three salespeople in the Northwest for product line X?". It got more complicated with questions such as "which marketing campaign executed in the past three years resulted in the highest revenue from new clients?".

As a side note, I became thoroughly impressed with the training team at Cognos. In the classes I took (PowerPlay, ReportNet, Metrics Manager, and others), the students would throw out the types of questions I mentioned above, but for a wide range of industries and a mix of scientific and business data, and the instructors -- all of them -- took the time to explain and demonstrate how to achieve the analysis. Kudos!

Fast forward to about two weeks ago, while listening to the Freakonomics audiobook, I had an epiphany. All along I was asking business questions and analyzing data but it never occurred to me that Cognos and related analysis tools could help immensely with understanding just about everything. Such as "are real estate agents really trying to get you the most money for your house?" or "how do teachers cheat, and how do you catch them"? Combining these types of questions with quality data and tools like Cognos PowerPlay, you can go a long way towards understanding the true motivators that make people do what they do.

After reading Freakonomics, I'm adding "Freakonomicist" to my list of careers to which I might someday pursue.

Short History of Nearly Everything

I just finished the lengthy book "A Short History of Nearly Everything (Unabridged)" by Bill Bryson. Actually, I finished the audio book, which took dozens of trips from work and back to get through.

In short, it covers nearly every theory, both past and present, about space, our galaxy, our planet, and all the way down to the billions of bacteria that are squirming around on all of us right now. Unfortunately, that last one is the one that will likely stick with you (pun intended) for a while, and will force you to buy a new pillow (as I did), wash your hands a lot more (I do), and accept that fact that you're a walking buffet (I haven't yet).

Despite causing you to grimace at times, I recommend this book for many other reasons -- its comical look at the many scientists who made the discoveries that we believe today, its use of visual imagery to get across just how big, or small, things really are, and for the narrator -- I give Richard Matthews a perfect 10 for his voice, pronunciations of nearly everything, and his patience.