Anticipating 2024: Top Trends in Analytics - Issue 179
Important data movements and how to prepare your team for 2024.
Welcome to the Data Analysis Journal, a weekly newsletter about data science and analytics.
As we enter 2024, I want to go through the top trends in data and analytics that have directly or indirectly touched on my work, sparkling discussions and piquing interest within my network.
The trends I will address reflect my perspective on analytics based on my projects, workflow, and ongoing conversations with my readers and fellow analysts.
I will also omit key topics we’ve had the distinct pleasure of reading in what felt like every tweet last year about GenAI or every LinkedIn post on data observation and data quality tools.
That being said, the report below might include “forced” trends by companies or VC firms because, at this point, I honestly feel like I exist in a nebulous dimension where the real and not-real bleed into one another. I’ll do my best to differentiate it below.
Let’s dive into it.
Notebooks enter analytics
It’s exciting to see how the wave of notebooks has overtaken analytics today (e.g., Hex, Hyperqury, Deepnote, Collab, etc.). We got used to using notebooks in data science and ML, but in 2024, they finally entered analytics with more confidence.
I love notebooks. They are naturally meant to accelerate data storytelling, offering documentation + analysis + version control + code + reporting + distribution + consolidated information all in one place.
If you think about it, 80% of analyst work is case studies and root cause analyses. We had to utilize dashboards + Excel + decks as the main output of our work. Until now.
Unlike dashboards and Excel files, notebooks let you share insight in a nice condensed output, offer context, post visuals, and back up every data point with the reference. Making it easy to store your old analyses and documentation, navigate through your peers’ work, and, most importantly - collaborate. I truly believe in notebooks if your team of analysts is not afraid to get out of their comfort zone.
Next-generation spreadsheets
The next-generation spreadsheet is also here, and they are laser-focused on BI and aren’t going to lose to notebooks or dashboards easily.
As you can see above, I am biased towards notebooks, so I didn’t take Equals seriously when they launched (a year ago?). However, I have to confess my appreciation for the utility of these tools. When I saw the RowZero and Arcwise demos, I was fascinated by how far the spreadsheets grew and how easily they could supercharge BI and finance. They keep all the functionality of Excel and magnify it with unlimited data, fast processing speed, collaboration options, seamless integrations with top databases and sources, SQL+Python build-ins, and AI.
We can analyze all the things now for just $500 per month.
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