Explain the Data
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- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 1, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 7, 2026
Latest issues
Actual vs Target vs Forecast (opens the original)
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A company can miss its target and still have a strong year. It can also hit its target and still have a problem.That sounds strange until you separate two ideas that often get mixed together: targets and forecasts.A target is what the business wants to achieve. A forecast is what the evidence says is likely to happen. They are both useful, but they do different jobs.The problem starts when reports, dashboards, and meetings treat them as if they mean the same thing.Thanks for read
Stop Comparing Everything To Last Month (opens the original)
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If a company makes $120,000 in sales this month, that sounds useful. But is it a good result or a bad one? You cannot really tell yet.Maybe the company made $90,000 last month. Now $120,000 looks like an improvement. Maybe the goal was $150,000. Now that exact same number looks disappointing.Or maybe the company made $140,000 at the same time last year. Now the business may actually be falling behind.All of these stories use the exact same $120,000.The number did not change at all. The compariso
Stop Making Impossible Promises with Data (opens the original)
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Weather forecasters never say “it will rain tomorrow.” They say there is a 70 percent chance of rain.That small change makes a big difference. It tells you rain is likely, but it also leaves room for a dry day. Nobody gets mad at the forecast when it does not rain, because it was never a promise.Data work should sound more like this.When you say a new feature will bring exactly 1,200 users, that number can sound like a promise. If the feature brings in 1,050 users, people think you missed it, ev
Customer ID, Email, Or Name: Which One Should You Trust? (opens the original)
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Working with data means working with real people, and real people are messy.Every customer dataset needs a way to tell one person apart from another. That sounds simple until you try to do it.Most teams end up choosing between three common options: customer ID, email, or name.They may all look useful, but they are not equally reliable. The one you choose can change the accuracy of your whole project.The field used to tell one customer apart from another is called an identifier.Why Names Are Not
The Reason Companies Still Need Analysts (opens the original)
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If data was always clean and ready to use, companies would not need analysts as much.They would connect the numbers to a dashboard tool, refresh the page, and move on.But that is not how real work goes.Analysts matter because information does not arrive in a neat little package. It comes from broken tools, old habits, and human mistakes.Someone has to make sense of it, check what is true, and turn the mess into something the business can trust.The mess is not a distraction from the work. The mes
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