SF Data Weekly - A Theory of B.S. Visualization, Perfect Prefect and Nim

From the author: “In this unhinged rant, I lay out my suspicion that a lot of visualizations are b.s.: charts that do not have even the common decency to intentionally lie but are totally unconcerned about the state of the world or any practical utility. I suspect that b.s. charts take up a large fraction of the time and attention of actual visualization producers and consumers, and yet are seemingly absent from academic research into visualization design.”

Prefect is a popular open-source Python library for automated workflow orchestration.

Real-time data replication is needed by many industries including eCommerce, Fintech, Healthcare, and SaaS. If you need real-time data insights, FlyData could be a good solution. [Sponsored]

PayPal is in the process of migrating its analytical workloads to Google Cloud Processing (GCP). This post covers the pros and cons of an on-premises Spark/Hadoop solution versus the GCP cloud solution.

Part of data storage is deciding which data to store and how long to store it. This piece examines the path one Brazilian technology company took to create a data governance framework.

Make Python run faster with CFFI and ctypes.

Nim is as easy to write as Python and as fast as C, and Benjamin Lee makes the case using examples from his experience at NIH.

A nice walk-through of a potential redesign of the CDC’s COVID data visualizations.

A taxonomy is simply a classification system, and this piece argues that data visualization is lacking one, and it’s a problem.

By building an API layer that serves metrics, Airbnb has created an interface layer between upstream data models and downstream applications.

This post presents a reference architecture and optimization strategies for building serverless data analytics solutions on AWS using Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics. It also shows the design approach that the engineering team at NortonLifeLock took to build out a petabyte-scale operational analytics platform that processes usage data for their VPN services.