Keynote: Data Bricolage, Adjacent Possible, Abstraction, Visual Memory, Reporting, Analysis and Discovery

1. Data BricolageHow Tableau Facilitates the Adjacent Possible
Dan Murray, InterWorks
Tableau Fringe Festival
October 5, 2015

2. Bricolage
Abstractions
Adjacent Possibilities
Visual Memory

3. Bricolage brē-kō-ˈläzh
Bricolage is a French loanword that means the
process of improvisation in a human endeavor.
Works or products of DIY endeavors.

4. Writing & Bricolage

5. Pablo Picasso
Visual bricolage

7. Picasso’s abstract reductionism

9. Stuart Kauffman
Adjacent Possible
1st order combinations
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

10. Stephane Tarnier
Chicken
incubator
to
Child
incubator
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

11. Adjacent Possible
“We have a natural tendency to romanticize
breakthrough innovations...
But ideas are works of bricolage
Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From

12. Tableau = Data Bricolage
Mechanisms for facilitating
combinations of ideas, data
and images.

13. Tableau Public
Creates adjacent possibilities

15. Tableau Public
Data Bricolage

16. Adjacent Possibilities = Data Bricolage

17. What else?

18. Method of Loci
The oldest known mnemonic strategy.

19. Grandmaster of Memory
Memorize 1,000 random digits in an hour
Memorize the order of 10 decks of cards in an hour
Memorize the order of one deck of cards < 2 minutes

20. Grandmasters by Country

22. Why Tableau?
Enables data bricolage
Facilitate the adjacent possible
Provides spatial memory triggers

23. Reports
The data you know

24. Analysis
The data you know you
need to know more about.

25. Discovery
The data you don’t know
you need to know more
about.

26. Three Kinds of Data
The data you know (reports)
The data you know you need to know more about (analysis)
The data you don’t know you need to know (discovery)

27. Recap
• Data Bricolage
• Remove the non-essential
• Memory is visual
• Three kinds of data

28. Tableau = Data Bricolage
Tableau Public = Adjacent Possibilities
Data Visualization = Simplified abstraction

29. Thank you!
Thank you!
Dan Murray, InterWorks2nd Edition