Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

The hype around AI is deafening, creating a noisy and confused environment. Organizations are looking for clarity on the role and application of AI in bringing more value to data, and for help avoiding the pitfalls that surround so many of these projects. These pitfalls include error-prone decision making and unintended consequences based on flawed data or “black box” algorithms, and gimmicky approaches including simple search and bolt-on AI that overpromise and under deliver.

According to positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, what I described with this skiing experience is known as flow state, defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” Csíkszentmihályi, who popularized the term in his 1990 book, notes the mental state of flow involves “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies.

With the launch of Qlik Sense Business and enhancements to Qlik Sense Enterprise in our September 2019 release we have again underlined why Qlik, the largest independent data and analytics vendor in the market, is leading the 3rd generation of BI and analytics.

In this blog post I’m going to write about a famous piece in visualization history. How can we prove that a visualization is more worth than just looking at the data? That’s a question Francis Anscombe probably asked himself when he back in 1973 constructed the dataset that became known as Anscombe's quartet. A dataset he could use to show statisticians how wrong they were thinking that “numerical calculations are exact, but graphs are rough."

Every time a new Gartner Magic Quadrant is published, I always have a flashback to the scene in the old Steve Martin movie “The Jerk” – when his character gets overly enthusiastic about seeing his name published in the new phonebook. As a software vendor, I think we sometimes look like this when the Gartner MQ is released, and everyone gets a little too excited.

Sometime ago, when I was with another software company, I was involved in a large implementation of our software. The deployment required our software to connect with a legacy customer application, so an integration between the two products had to be developed. When the Sales person put together the proposal, he quoted this integration for $0 because “it’s so simple, I could create it myself”.

AI and its enabled tools continue to enthrall business with its promise of efficiency and innovation. But, one of the things AI is also clearly enabling is the bias. We’ve all read the news and heard the scaremongering stories around potential flaws and biases in Artificial Intelligence systems. I believe for this technology to reach its full potential, addressing bias will need to be a top priority.

Today I’m going to do something different and not talk about a specific visualization as I’ve done in my last blog posts, but rather a technique that we use within visualization. How to create multiple views that each show a different part of your dataset?

We are halfway through 2019 and with the third release of the year, our momentum remains strong as we continue to deliver significant product innovations for our customers across the Qlik portfolio.

I clip in and drive down on the pedals with all of my energy, legs turning and lungs burning as my heart rate soars during this cycling test. I continue to push my limits during this eight-minute, all-out effort. Why would anyone put themselves through such an exercise? The answer is testing. It is a great method to determine the current baseline, establish targeted areas for development and set milestone events.