visioncritical's Channel Visionary Technology, Critical Thinking At Vision Critical we build online platforms that facilitate two-way communications with customers, employees and citizens in contexts ranging from market research to civic engagement. We help our clients ask better questions, listen more intently, and learn what the people they care about think and say. Over 600 organizations around the globe, including a third of the top 100 brands, have come to rely on the private online communities developed and supported through our cloud based software and global services. free statistical software click here to return to methods page click here to return to social change page This page lists primarily statistical software, along with mapping, spreadsheets, database, stuff to do data analysis or management. All of the packages are free to use, that is: there is no charge for individuals to use them. Many of the websites say that individuals are free to download and use the packages. In some cases, there may be charges to institutions.
‘Big Data’ Can Be Hard to Harness Online retailing has existed for nearly 20 years, and product recommendations have been around for almost as long, due to the pioneering work of Amazon, which applied for a patent on its collaborative filtering technology in 1998. Since then, a majority of large retailers have adopted online product recommendations. Yet many of these implementations are still fairly primitive because they fail to understand an online shopper’s real-time product needs. That’s likely to change, however, thanks to the power of “Big Data.” Major ecommerce players like Netflix, Wal-Mart and eBay are leveraging affordable, open-source Big Data tools to deliver real-time personalized shopping experiences. And they say the efforts are paying off, with higher customer spending and improved retention rates.
True Colors: What Brand Colors Say About A Business Studies have shown that a product’s color influences 60-80 percent of a customer’s purchasing decision, which makes choosing the wrong color a death sentence before your brand ever has a chance to get off the ground. The most recognizable labels in the world are defined by their colors. Take a second to think of some of the most popular brands that instantly come to mind: Coca-Cola, Facebook, Apple, McDonalds, and Google – to name a few. All of these companies strategically use colors in their logo, website, and product to appeal to customers, making them instantly recognizable across the globe. Color is one of the first things people notice about a brand, and there are a few colors which get the most play: blue, red, black/grayscale, and yellow. 95 percent of companies only use one or two colors, 5 percent use more than two, 41 percent use text only, and 9 percent don’t feature the company name at all. Click here or below for a full-sized version.
How to Make Forms, Surveys, and Quizzes in Google Docs and Spreadsheets or Google Apps Want to find out what your coworkers want for lunch? Need to get feedback for your training session? Want to find out which movie your friends want to see on Saturday? Do you need a database of your club member's phone numbers? Use Google Forms. Forms in Google Docs are easy to create. PSPP - GNU Project GNU PSPP is a program for statistical analysis of sampled data. It is a Free replacement for the proprietary program SPSS, and appears very similar to it with a few exceptions. The most important of these exceptions are, that there are no “time bombs”; your copy of PSPP will not “expire” or deliberately stop working in the future. Neither are there any artificial limits on the number of cases or variables which you can use. There are no additional packages to purchase in order to get “advanced” functions; all functionality that PSPP currently supports is in the core package. PSPP is a stable and reliable application.
Hadoop Security: Some Enterprises Miss Risks Not enough enterprises understand the security issues that come along with the popular big data platform, members of Hadoop community warn. Hadoop has plenty of advocates, most of whom praise the open-source framework's speedy data processing and analytics capabilities for organizations that manage huge volumes of data. But many enterprises don't understand how to secure Hadoop, some Hadoop community members say. InfoGraphic Designs: Overview, Examples and Best Practices Information graphics or infographics are visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics are used where complex information needs to be explained quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. They are also used extensively as tools by computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians to ease the process of developing and communicating conceptual information. They can present a rich amount of information without intimidating you. Or sometimes they intimidate you, but make the digesting of the information much more bearable. Here in this article below, we are going to discuss best practices for designing infographics followed by some examples which might help you learn a thing or two.
Developing Dynamic Surveys Smart surveys that present the respondent with questions and answers specifically tailored to each individual respondent improve response rates and improve the integrity of collected data. QuestionPro.com offers the ability to create smart surveys using a simple point and click interface. Many techniques may be utilized when developing surveys that dynamically direct a respondent through a survey based on the respondent's prior survey responses.
Top 10 Spreadsheet Secrets From A Nonprofit Data Nerd Note from Beth: I made a personal goal for myself to get past my dislike of spreadsheets and become more fluent. First I had to “Stop Fearing the Spreadsheet” and then started to interview nonprofit data nerds about their Excel secrets. Why get good at Excel? Businesses 'Freak Out' Over Big Data - Services - Internet/data services Mortar Data CEO K Young says many companies struggle to keep up with the infrastructure and expertise big data requires. Does your enterprise have the resources it needs to take full advantage of big data? 12 Hadoop Vendors To Watch In 2012 (click image for larger view and for slideshow)
10 Fun Tools To Easily Make Your Own Infographics People love to learn by examining visual representations of data. That’s been proven time and time again by the popularity of both infographics and Pinterest. So what if you could make your own infographics ? What would you make it of? It’s actually easier than you think… even if you have zero design skills whatsoever. [bizodo] Online Form Builder and Project Management Software Before we can continue,we need a little info from you... Please enter your valid email address below. We'll set you up with an account to store your document and use this email address to update you on activity related to it. Signup is simple,all we need is your email address... Please enter your valid email address below. We'll set you up with an account to store your documents and use this email address to update you on activity related to them.