Word of the Day: slice and dice

Word of the Day Daily updates on the latest technology terms | July 9, 2018 slice and dice To slice and dice is to break a body of information down into smaller parts or to examine it from different viewpoints so that you can understand it better. The term has its roots in cooking and describes two types of knife skills every chef needs to master. To slice means to cut and to dice means to cut into very small uniform sections and the two actions are often performed sequentially. For example, a chef may first cut an onion into slices and then cut the slices up into dices. In data analysis, the term generally implies a systematic reduction of a body of data into smaller parts or views that will yield more information. The term is also used to mean the presentation of information in a variety of different and useful ways.   Pivot tables are a popular self-service BI tool for slicing and dicing data. Essentially, a pivot table sorts, counts and totals the data stored in one database table or spreadsheet and creates a second table ? the actual pivot table ? that summarizes the data. Typically, users will use a pivot table to extract information from a BI solution?s data warehouse in order to mine through data in an interactive manner without requiring the IT department to run an ad hoc report. Slice and dice contrasts with the terms drill down, drill across and roll up. To drill down is to look at more detailed data in progressively deeper levels of a body of information's hierarchy. To drill across is to compare data in similar levels of a body of information's hierarchy, and to roll up is to aggregate data by removing detail levels from the hierarchy. Quote of the Day "PivotTables are extremely flexible and allow the user to slice and dice data in many, many useful ways." - Craig Hatmaker Trending Terms pivot table treemap dimension table star schema fast data drill down Learning Center Airbnb, Univision highlight best practices in BI Some of the best practices in BI were highlighted at the 2018 Real BI Conference by Theresa Johnson of Airbnb and Simone Knight of Univision Communications. Improving population health goal of data analytics research A Reno-based hospital and research institute are collaborating to study genetic, medical, environmental and demographic data. The expectation is that data analysis of these combined factors will identify trends that will lead to improving population health in Nevada. 'Big data' poses big challenges for traditional analytics approaches Learn how technologies such as massively parallel processing (MPP) systems, in-database analytics, columnar databases and Hadoop are providing new ways to perform analytics on big data. Communication skills a must for business intelligence professionals Organizations are looking for business intelligence professionals who understand the business and have good communication skills, says careers expert Matt Mueller. Find out why. HR analytics early adopters say meaningful metrics, narratives are key At an HCI conference, HR leaders said identifying meaningful metrics and constructing data narratives were keys to success in HR analytics initiatives. Quiz Yourself What do you call a BI process that's designed to answer a single, specific business question? a. ad hoc analysis b. unitary analysis Answer   Stay in Touch For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed! FOLLOW US About This E-Newsletter This e-newsletter is published by the TechTarget network. To unsubscribe from Whatis.com, click here. Please note, this will not affect any other subscriptions you have signed up for. TechTarget, Whatis, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466. Contact: webmaster@techtarget.com Copyright 2018 TechTarget. All rights reserved.