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Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

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Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#91

Post by tommynicholas »

teej wrote: post #62

Can we talk about getting data into Google Sheets? Is there a standard way to build a pipe from, say, a reporting database to dump aggregates into Google Sheets? I built a private Add-on for my company that surfaces specific aggregates as Sheets functions (i.e. getSalesByDay(...)) and I have found so many bugs with that whole ecosystem. Deploys are completely manual and require copy-paste, you can't reliably tell wha…

what kind of DB was the reporting database if you don't mind me asking? Seems like translating the data into Google Sheets is unnecessary if you're just trying to graph/chart it, although as I say that I'm realizing there may not be a tool that could just graph it directly that's easy enough to use/cheap enough.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#92

Post by guiomie »

teej wrote: post #62

Can we talk about getting data into Google Sheets? Is there a standard way to build a pipe from, say, a reporting database to dump aggregates into Google Sheets? I built a private Add-on for my company that surfaces specific aggregates as Sheets functions (i.e. getSalesByDay(...)) and I have found so many bugs with that whole ecosystem. Deploys are completely manual and require copy-paste, you can't reliably tell wha…

Ive used gspread for Python without any issues, except for its lack of support for font/cell formatting (highlights, strikethrought...etc)

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#93

Post by paulrosenzweig »

temp246810 wrote: post #84
tryitnow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently evaluating BI vendors for my company and just about every major contender has this functionality or is developing it. Read the Gartner report from 2017 and they basically just come out and say that this will be the new standard in BI. The much harder problem is data management and preparation. Anyone with half a brain and a decent visualization tool can create basic graphs - but that doesn't mean they s…

Just out of curiousity, which one did you go with? We're in the middle of doing this ourselves and would like to hear a random HNers thoughts on the subject.

I'm at a ~100 person company. We've been using Mode for about six months and like it.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#94

Post by shostack »

ozataman wrote: post #57
tryitnow wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently evaluating BI vendors for my company and just about every major contender has this functionality or is developing it. Read the Gartner report from 2017 and they basically just come out and say that this will be the new standard in BI. The much harder problem is data management and preparation. Anyone with half a brain and a decent visualization tool can create basic graphs - but that doesn't mean they s…

And data management / preparation is where major mistakes are made - get a join wrong and you may easily be missing data or double counting something just obscure enough to go unnoticed like "ancillary sales". There is something potentially harmful, or perhaps that needs addressing, about end-user tools growing in expressive power. A good friend who does statistical genetics work once told me "but I don't want every…

Yep. Wake me when an AI can tell me "hey, that monthly trending conversion report you asked me to pull...yeah, you're missing two days worth of data when tracking broke, so it will just make your numbers look lower when rolled-up monthly and be hard to notice."

BTW, that is also the reason I not only set alerts, but review data at a daily level when pulling any rolled-up reports of significance.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#96

Post by putlake »

hacker_9 wrote: post #54
mbesto wrote: post #28

When I worked for SAP back in 2007 (I was a fresh grad at the time), I was working in the business intelligence (reporting, analytics, and data warehousing) group and noticed how cumbersome it was for organizations to simply create and view reports (we're talking millions of dollars). I once said to my boss "you realize that in the future we'll simply just write 'show me a line graph for sales in the northeast'". And…

Watching the gif on that page, it actually seems slower to use. Instead of just drag selecting the table, I have to write out all the header text now by hand.

It will all be voice driven soon so natural language has an advantage over using hands.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#97

Post by teej »

tommynicholas wrote: post #91
teej wrote: post #62

Can we talk about getting data into Google Sheets? Is there a standard way to build a pipe from, say, a reporting database to dump aggregates into Google Sheets? I built a private Add-on for my company that surfaces specific aggregates as Sheets functions (i.e. getSalesByDay(...)) and I have found so many bugs with that whole ecosystem. Deploys are completely manual and require copy-paste, you can't reliably tell wha…

what kind of DB was the reporting database if you don't mind me asking? Seems like translating the data into Google Sheets is unnecessary if you're just trying to graph/chart it, although as I say that I'm realizing there may not be a tool that could just graph it directly that's easy enough to use/cheap enough.

The reporting DB in my case is Redshift. The business use case isn't exactly charting. My goal is to enable a business user to reference certain types of important aggregates in Google Sheets. By enabling this, business users can then compose tabular views of data that are rich, dense, and always correct and up to date. It also allows business users to very quickly prototype dashboards and make detailed specs for reports before an analyst or engineer has to get involved.

This is one tool in our tool belt for communicating with data. We also have an in house SQL-in-chart-out platform that everyone has access to and we have Looker for deeper exploratory work.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#98

Post by dopamean »

jkaptur wrote: post #80
yeldarb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, so much this. I've encountered this same issue. For our non-technical employees I write an endpoint that gives them a CSV with the most current info (often with a super simple front-end that they can use to query for specific date ranges or with filters). They download this CSV and upload it into their sheet manually to update the underlying data when they need new info. It would be so great if you could just sa…

Does the IMPORTDATA function work for that?

It does. I use heroku dataclips to get data out of a database and import it into google sheets using importdata. It's really simple and for my use case incredibly useful.

Re: Visualize data instantly with machine learning in Google Sheets

#99

Post by primeblue »

tryitnow wrote: post #45
mbesto wrote: post #28

When I worked for SAP back in 2007 (I was a fresh grad at the time), I was working in the business intelligence (reporting, analytics, and data warehousing) group and noticed how cumbersome it was for organizations to simply create and view reports (we're talking millions of dollars). I once said to my boss "you realize that in the future we'll simply just write 'show me a line graph for sales in the northeast'". And…

I'm currently evaluating BI vendors for my company and just about every major contender has this functionality or is developing it. Read the Gartner report from 2017 and they basically just come out and say that this will be the new standard in BI. The much harder problem is data management and preparation. Anyone with half a brain and a decent visualization tool can create basic graphs - but that doesn't mean they s…

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