Data is like a woman who refuses to yield her charms to those who woo her. It requires all the charm and seduction skills of a Don Juan DeMarco. For those of you who have seen this movie, I need to remind you of the scene where Johnny Depp walks into the restaurant and spotting a lonely pretty woman, moves to seduce her with just words and…let me just say leaves her very satisfied and very much smitten.
Not all of us can be a Don Juan. And not all analytical tools have comprehensively stormed the bastion of data interpretation and analysis. Attempts too numerous to mention have been made with no conclusive evidence of having cracked the problem. Today I came across a tool that could at least claim to have dented the data analytics problem significantly and in an affordable way.
Swivel is the site.
Swivel provides tools to chart/analyze data online and over the web. The results of the analysis can be shared, blogged and tagged. Web 2.0 goodness on structured data. At the moment it consumes data from public data sources and provides ability to upload custom data too. They have an Excel Add-in to simplify this process.
There are limitations – all data uploaded is made public(this will change with their private edition), API to do charting and leverage data sources on the fly not released etc. But I see this as something that will be be addressed over a period of time.
I already see the next generation of arm chair statisticians being groomed on this tool.
Brilliant idea and there is so much one can do with this. I shall post some suggestions and more thoughts later.
