PASS Business Analytics Conference 2015
2015-04-20..2015-04-22
Santa Clara, United States
[PASS Business Analytics Conference 2013, PASS Business Analytics Conference 2015]
who it's for
business analysts, excel power users, bi developers, data analysts, analytics managers, data engineers, data scientists, bi architects
topics
Power Query ETL patterns; Power Pivot model optimization; Power BI report design; excel data visualization techniques; predictive analytics with R; logistic regression for advertising; PMML model export and scoring; Hadoop integration with Excel; DAX inventory valuation techniques; data preparation and cleansing
| title | author | length |
|---|---|---|
| Predictive Analytics in Social Media and Online Display Advertising | Mahesh Kumar | 30m |
Uses logistic regression on hundreds of millions of impressions with ~5,000 features, retaining all clicks and sampling 1% of zeros to handle 0.1% CTR… | ||
| Real-Time Big Data Analytics with R | David Smith | 53m |
Shows how R plus Revolution R builds a real-time ad-click predictor: a logistic model trained on 1 million rows with 5% positive clicks (training run ~4… | ||
| Making Better Decisions with Data | Jordan Goldmeier | 52m |
Examples show where data fails: Netflix Prize: 10% offline improvement but Netflix declines to implement for cost reasons, recommendation system still relies… | ||
| A New Approach to Defining BI Requirements | James Taylor | 01h 00m |
Argues that BI requirements must start with the decision to improve, not the data, using the Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard to map questions… | ||
| Best Practices for Collecting and Analyzing Data with Power Query and Excel | Chris Webb | 01h 04m |
Shows concrete Power Query patterns and working M snippets for real problems: swapping folders to demo bad CSVs, using list.difference to detect added/renamed… | ||
| The Pain and Glory of Data Preparation | Oz du Soleil | 53m |
Showcases concrete fixes not fluffy theory: use Excel pivot tables and Power Query to unpivot report-style rows, import a folder of CSVs into one table (he… | ||
| Creating Outstanding Spreadsheet Models | Jordan Goldmeier | 53m |
Argues that good spreadsheet models use information/transformation/presentation separation, favor formulas over VBA run buttons because code hides logic and… | ||
| Starting Your First Predictive Analytics Project | Dean Abbott | 02h 03m |
Loads the CUP98 donation data into KNIME, uses a 95k learn set with a 5.1% response (responders give $15 on average, overall mean $0.79 when nonresponders are… | ||
| What Skills Do Predictive Modelers Need? | Dean Abbott | 55m |
27 years of practice crystallizes into a few concrete claims: a neural‑network variant is used for real‑time missile guidance, automation sifts enormous… | ||
| Beyond What-If: How to Build Analytic and Decision Models in Spreadsheets | Daniel Fylstra | 01h 56m |
Shows concrete workflows in Excel: build a Monte Carlo model (e.g. airline overbooking with Monte Carlo (1,000 trials) sampling) and find the… | ||
| Making Informed Decisions: Guidelines for Creating an Effective Dashboard | Rick Grantham | 37m |
A practical process for dashboards: determine data scope first with a data element matrix, then whiteboard measures and dimensions, create a query mock-up… | ||
| Using Premium Data for Analysts | Lynn Langit | 54m |
Begins with a business question (where to place 50 oyster carts) and shows actionable steps: start with open city data (DBpedia, Amsterdam museum feeds)… | ||
| Internet of Things Farm: Introducing Kids to Data Science | Jessica Ellis | 37m |
A youth program pairs cooking with coding and doubles down on social, peer-led learning to boost girls in CS, producing 62% girls at a week-long Barbacoa camp… | ||
| Top 10 Excel Formulas for Analysts | Purna Duggirala | 57m |
Live demos in Excel 2013 show ten core techniques with concrete results: relative/absolute/mixed references and named/structural table references that… | ||
| Creating Awesome Charts in Excel: Process and Examples | Purna Duggirala | 01h 54m |
Explains a 4-step chart process and builds concrete Excel 2013 examples: reshaping data with formulas/pivots, then making a thermometer chart for target vs… | ||
| Resistance is Futile: What You Need to Know about Big Data | Michelle Ufford | 56m |
Asserts that most teams will need Hadoop soon and describes a production data lake holding petabytes with 88,000 catalog objects, where 80–90% of company data… | ||
| The Data Supply Chain: Maximizing Value Throughout the Cycle | Hyoun Park | 49m |
Defines a concrete data supply chain: question→source→prep→analysis→presentation→insight→close loop and argues analysts must own every step, not just… | ||
| Pulling Back the Green Curtain: Data Forensics, Power BI, and Dataviz | Jen Stirrup | 57m |
Uses R + RStudio (ggplot2) and Power BI to run Benford’s-law checks on vote tallies: scripts melt the CSV, extract first digits, count frequencies and plot… | ||
| Creating an Effective Reporting Strategy: Tools, Metrics, Analytics | Rick Grantham | 41m |
Shows a three‑stage delivery: build a data warehouse (the "Mac Truck" using SSIS/SSAS), add dashboards and KPIs (Power BI/Excel for ad hoc), then run analytics… | ||
| Unlocking Big Data: The Power of Cognitive Computing | James Kobielus | 01h 02m |
Cognitive computing is framed as “AI for the 21st century” that runs machine learning and deep learning on large, diverse data via cloud APIs and Bluemix… | ||
| Discover, Acquire, and Transform Your Data with Power Query | Miguel Llopis | 01h 13m |
Power Query demonstrates end-to-end acquisition and reshaping: discovers public datasets via a Data Catalog with 3 million tables, pulls web pages and Google… | ||
| Embracing The Data Leadership Nexus to Achieve Strategic Success | Richard Lee | 01h 07m |
Argues a concrete framework called Data Leadership Nexus that combines executive accountability, organizational culture and technical capabilities to build a… | ||
| Leveraging Open Data to Gain Advantage on the Competition | Brandon Purcell | 01h 04m |
Shows how the CFPB consumer complaints database (about 362,000 records at the time) and HUDMA/HMDA mortgage files (130 million applications total, 17M in 2013)… | ||
| Optimizing your Power Pivot models using Power Query | Ken Puls | 02h 12m |
Builds a huge Excel model from CSVs (~800k rows) the slow Excel‑Pro way, then reshapes it with Power Query and Power Pivot to cut memory from ~36 MB to ~13 MB… | ||
| Increased Margins, Period: Modern Excel and the Bottom Line | Rob Collie | 02h 15m |
Demonstrates using Excel + Power Pivot/Power BI (2010→2013), Power Query and cube formulas to move from noisy totals to actionable metrics: replace total… | ||
| 60 Reporting Tips in 60 Minutes | Ike Ellis | 01h 04m |
Sixty rapid, practical tips catalog specific tools and fixes: use LavishBootstrap for hex colors, ColorBrewer for palettes, and Redgate SQL Search to find… | ||
| Inventory Valuation Techniques with DAX and Tabular Models | Marco Russo | 58m |
Shows how to compute inventory quantity with a cumulative total over transaction rows and then value using last price or weighted average period, while noting… | ||
| Budgeting with Power Pivot | Marco Russo | 01h 03m |
Uses Power Pivot and Power Query plus DAX and DAX Studio to turn a year-level budget into month-by-month figures, allocating by last‑year sales (2009) to… | ||
| Data Visualization, Storytelling, and the Brain | James Haight | 30m |
Claims that human brains favor pattern recognition over raw computation and that visualization sits in this biological sweet spot; shows Power BI, Watson… | ||
| Dynamic Presentation Using Excel CUBE Formulas | Bob Phillips | 01h 05m |
Step-by-step demo of building a dynamic, asymmetrical Excel report using CUBEMEMBER/CUBEVALUE/CUBESET against the PowerPivot data model, showing how to… | ||
| Instant Dashboards for Your Critical Business Applications | Theresa Palmer-Boroski | 57m |
Power BI now delivers ready-made content pack dashboards for services like Google Analytics, GitHub, Marketo, Dynamics CRM/Marketing, Salesforce, SendGrid and… | ||
| Advanced Modelling and Calculation Using the Power BI Designer | Kasper de Jonge | 01h 08m |
New Power BI Designer ships with an integrated authoring surface that combines Power Query, Power Pivot and Power View into a single .pbix workflow, delivers… | ||
| Discover, Manage, Analyze, and Visualize Your Data with Power BI | Miguel Martínez | 01h 01m |
Live demo shows Power BI turning raw Excel, Google Analytics, HDInsight/Hadoop and Twitter streams into dashboards in minutes, with the team claiming a… | ||
| Best Practice Mobile Dashboard Design | Jen Underwood | 01h 04m |
Mobile dashboards double adoption relative to desktop BI — 42% adoption versus ~20% — and teams that apply best practices make decisions 6x faster. Practical… | ||
| Visualizing and Analyzing Data in 3D | Igor Peev | 01h 01m |
Demos show Power Map for Excel loading a CSV, auto-geocoding zip/lat-long, and animating timelines so outliers and trends become obvious rather than… | ||
| The Valued Analyst: From Data to Insight in 60 Minutes | Marc Reguera | 01h 09m |
Claims that analysts must define mission and drivers before grabbing data, then build P times Q trees and inspect distribution to find the 20% that moves 80%… | ||
| 'Scenarios for Uncertainty in Business Analytics as Your Crystal Ball | Mark Wilcock | 01h 01m |
Projects CO2 to 2050 with four concrete scenarios (business-as-usual, -7% tipping point, carbon-capture in 2020s, mixed complex), implemented as ~150 lines of… | ||
| Using Hadoop with Excel and Power BI, Plus Data Discovery 101 | Andrew J. Brust | 02h 05m |
Compares Hadoop 1 (MapReduce + HDFS) to Hadoop 2 (YARN + interactive engines), provisions an HDInsight on Azure blob storage cluster (single‑node for demos… | ||
| Enabling Customer-Driven Insight: How Intel is Delivering Self-Service BI | David Schaefer | 01h 06m |
Intel claims a four‑prong program—partnership framework, agile data marts, MDM and a data lake—cuts report delivery from ~six months to 4–6 weeks, shifts 70%+… | ||
| The ROI of Business Analytics: Calculating Financial Return | Othniel Denis | 51m |
Explains a concrete ROI method using Net Present Value and a cost of capital hurdle, with Excel/NPV functions and discount examples (3% vs 10%) to show how… | ||
| The Analytics of Growth Hacking | Jack Mardack | 49m |
Describes building an analytics pipeline that ties acquisition to deep product behavior: installs extended anonymous web logging and a modified cookie to join… | ||
| MrExcel's Most Productive Analysis Techniques | Bill Jelen | 02h 06m |
Covers concrete Excel shortcuts and fixes: create a ready-to-use chart in one keystroke (Alt+F1), save it as a template and set it as default, paste new data… | ||
| How to Create Value and Present Data to Business Executives in SharePoint | Matt Allington | 01h 01m |
Shows how to take PowerPivot workbooks and deliver them as dashboard‑style pages on SharePoint Enterprise using Excel Services: hide unused rows/columns… | ||
| Create Reports That Help You Run Your Business | Avi Singh | 01h 04m |
Builds interactive dashboards from a single PowerPivot data model, rendering Power View on SharePoint as cards (high‑level metrics), column charts… | ||
| Social Listening, Data Extraction & Discovery | Paco Gonzalez | 56m |
Live Twitter streams get pulled via APIs and stored in a Hadoop/HDInsight HBase cluster, visualized on a geo‑map, and loaded into an Access/Power Pivot… | ||
| Social Listening for Richer Data, Unstructured Analytics | Paco Gonzalez | 55m |
Shows concrete pipelines: pulls Foursquare check‑ins and maps Michelin star density to pick a Barcelona street, streams tweets with an Azure Logic App into… | ||
| Big Data and the Data Lake from the Analyst Perspective | Scott Shaw | 02h 05m |
Claim: a data lake lets all data types coexist cheaply and be queried with familiar SQL tools. Demo uses the Hortonworks sandbox (Ambari, Hue), Hive/HCatalog… | ||
| The Art of Prototyping Analytics | Ken Raetz | 01h 04m |
Shows how to prototype end-to-end analytics with Excel tools: extract and clean HTML/web tables with Power Query, model with Power Pivot, publish to Power BI… | ||
| Big Ways Small Businesses are Leveraging Analytics to Gain Insights | Sandy Rivas | 01h 06m |
Power BI sits on top of a SQL POS using Power Query and Excel/Power View to build live dashboards that track sales, inventory, noise and tap temperatures… | ||
| Self Service Business Intelligence: Helping Businesses Help Themselves | Dipak Bhudia | 51m |
A bank facing dozens of regulatory reports moves from a months‑long IT bottleneck to rapid self-service: subject experts use a sandbox environment and a… | ||
| Advanced Excel Add-Ins | Zack Barresse | 01h 04m |
Explains building pure VBA Excel add‑ins (no COM/XLL or managed code), shows using custom UI editor or Andy Pope’s RibbonX for ribbon XML, and chooses xlsb for… | ||
| Is There Really Such a Thing as Turnkey Data Analytics Solution? | Satheesh Iyer | 37m |
Claims a working turnkey: an HP-Microsoft appliance (CS300) arrives pre-racked, pre-installed appliance combining PDW/APS and HDInsight so structured and… | ||
| nothing matches | ||