Examining the data behind the information
In 2006, James Governor noticed that Gartner's most recent magic quadrant for business intelligence platforms was evaluated based on interviews with 105 accounts across at least 16 vendors... and I agree with his thought - this doesn't seem a deep sample. I have worked with many customers who take Gartner's magic quadrants as gospel, on the assumption that it is representative of how vendor technologies are deployed and used across their industry
| Link | Description |
| Eight of the Worst Spreadsheet Blunders | CIO Magazine article covering research that suggests as many as 80 percent of spreadsheets contain significant errors. Eight examples are included with lessons learned (Aug 07) |
| Sharing Birthdays | How many people would you need to have a greater than 50% change that two share the same birthday? Just 23! Read the post to understand why (July 2006) |
| Distracting Data | Why summaries can do too good a job of hiding the detail - sometimes you need to take in the detail (Oct 2005) |
Good Books (I've read) |