Communication
Presenting results to people who do not care about your architecture, and should not have to.
6 articles, newest first.
- Cohort retention in SQL, without the spreadsheet How to build a retention table that survives contact with real data: cohort definition, a period spine, and the bug that makes retention look like it is improving.
- Communicating results: the analysis is not the deliverable The decision is the deliverable. How to structure findings for people who will never read your notebook — answer first, uncertainty in plain language, units they own.
- Simpson's paradox is hiding in your dashboard Aggregates can reverse when you split by segment — a mix-shift illusion that routinely misleads metric reviews. How to spot it and which number to trust.
- When it is not a data problem Some requests do not need a model, a dashboard, or you. Recognising them early is the highest-leverage thing a data person does, and the least rewarded.
- Turning a business request into a question you can answer Stakeholders ask for dashboards and models. Underneath is a decision someone needs to make. How to find it before you build the wrong thing.
- Automation and jobs: picking the right unit of analysis Why "will automation take my job" is the wrong question, what a task-level view shows that a job-level view hides, and how to reason about it without hype or doom.