The other day when my colleague talked about “slicing and dicing” the data, my mind wandered to think of slicing and dicing my vegetables for lunch. That was precisely when I started drawing parallels between data analytics (which earns me my daily bread) and my passion for cooking.
Data in all its unstructured and raw glory, in excel files, .csvs , .xmls are pretty much like the onions, tomatoes, spinach in your kitchen. You look at them with the same perplexity as they stare back at you mysteriously, not knowing what they are fated to become on that particular day. Meanwhile in your head, you sift through all the possibilities you can conjure up for them. Do you want to stick with the simple dal and rice, like the go-to bar or pie chart. Or do you want to do something fancy, like a waterfall or a sunburst chart? Sure the former will serve the purpose, but if you are willing to put in some additional effort, the latter can be pretty satisfying too. Once you’ve decided on whether you’re going with a quotidian or a gourmet meal, it’s time to get to work!
Now, anyone who has spent a reasonable time in the kitchen will tell you that blunt knives can take the joy out of cooking. Likewise, we recommend using the latest and sharpest tools available in the market to beat, whisk and chop your data. Also, like how you wouldn’t want to use a paring knife to cut your meat, a reasonable knowledge on which tools to use with which kinds of data will serve you well. You may peel off your NULLs and skin the missing values. Sometimes your data may need to go through multiple ETL (extract, transform, load) workflows like boiling, steaming, frying before they can be incorporated into the dish.
Then you check for salt as you check if the numbers add up. You make the corrections, as well as you can. In misfortunate scenarios, you may need to go back to the cutting board and start over. Finally, when your dishes are off the stove and you put together your multiple charts and numbers onto the dashboard, you need to make sure that they are arranged in such a way that they complement each other, enhance the overall appeal and health of your meal. You might add a dash of a cilantro here and a touch of color there as final dressing touches. It is important to keep in mind the basic principles of plating the final meal — balance your numbers, keep the right size and highlight your key metrics.
You have successfully cooked your data if your clients are able to devour the dashboard, chew through the numbers and ingest the insights served on their plate and then turn to you and say — “Bravo, that was consumable”.
Now that you can see how similar they both are, with a bit of practice and repetition and a pinch of creativity and passion, you can master both these skills. After all, you know what they say, cooking is not data science! ;)
