Asians are better at math due to their language and because they live in rice paddies. But don’t just take my word for it, take Malcolm Gladwell’s. That’s one of his assertions in “Outliers: The Story of Success.” I’ve written before about that book and I found myself thinking about it again the other day while … Read more
It was a wonderful June day, with plenty of sunshine and warmth for everyone to share. It was June 17th, 2002, ten years ago today. I took a drive that day to visit my grandfather in the hospital. I spent a couple of hours there. We talked and at times he seemed alert and other times … Read more
30,000. It’s a big number. Most numbers we deal with in life are at a much smaller scale. Speed limits, cups of coffee, street addresses, and even TPS reports (that’s transactions per/sec) aren’t usually in the 30k range. So when I saw that I was coming up on my 30,000th tweet today I spent a … Read more
No one can control all the events that make up their day. It is how we deal with those events, of course, that define who we are. Some handle the ebb and flow better than others. In the field of data professionals we often feel that our entire role is more reactive than proactive. I … Read more
I’ve been writing (and blogging) for about ten years now. I’ve written lots of things over the years and I have learned how much better my writing becomes when I remove words upon editing. So much improvement can be found that I often feel it might have been best to have not written anything at … Read more
Yesterday I showed you some real world SQL joins and their associated diagrams. I also left as an exercise for the reader this question regarding a standard three table join: “explain why I could need 127 different diagrams” I had a few people guess the answer on Twitter and G+ as well as some emails. … Read more
