Stop aggregating away the signal in your data

For five years as a data analyst, I forecasted and analyzed Google's revenue. For six years as a data visualization specialist, I've helped clients and colleagues discover new features of the data they know best. Time and time again, I've found that by being more specific about what's important to us and embracing the complexity in our data, we can discover new features in that data. These features can lead us to ask better data-driven questions that change how we analyze our data, the parameters we choose for our models, our scientific processes, or our business strategies. My colleagues Ian Johnson, Mike Freeman, and I recently collaborated on a series of data-driven stories about electricity usage in Texas and California to illustrate best practices of Analyzing Time Series Data.