Achooo! Did you know that seasonal allergies affect about 50 million people in the US, penicillin kills about 400 people/year, and some people are allergic to cockroaches?! Learn all about allergies in this episode. (more…)

Happy New Year! Thank you to all listeners and subscribers for your support this past year. 10 - Data borders will break down - logical data lakes and logical data warehouses will grow as companies embrace data virtualization products like Denodo. Data preparation tools, like the new Project Maestro from Tableau, will allow people to seamlessly pull from a) on-premise databases and excel files; b) cloud repositories like Redshift and BigTable; and c) hosted products like Workday and Salesforce...

Holiday Weight Gain Studies Studies are very mixed on whether holiday eating causes weight gain. The Good1 In several studies over the last thirty-one years, subjects gained approximately 3/4 to 2 lbs. during the holiday season However, in one study participants felt they had gained 4x as much weight as they actually gained Two other key finding: Although the amount of weight gained between the holidays was small, it represented the majority of the weight gained for the year ...

Worst Pun Ever: Today, we are talking about Al… Al Gore… Al Gore Rhythms… Algorithms! Definition: a step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end especially by a computer1 Inputs: Many algorithms use census data or FICO score as one of their prime inputs Plus any custom information you give a website Plus any information they glean about you from other sites (when you visit a site with a Facebook Share button, Facebook can track that you're there17) W...

History of Data in Politics First off, 538's podcast, What's the Point did a great four part series on the data of politics that covered the history of politics from the late 1800s through the primaries. So please check out the above links for more context behind this. A brief history of data in politics shows the major ways candidates appealed to constituents progressed along this path: Party Elite chose candidates. Direct outreach - Candidates engage voters directly, including thing...

Fun Fact: The main riff in NBC's Olympic them is from Bugler's Dream (1958) by  Leo Arnaud. History Most believe games started in 776 BC as part of a religious festival in Greece to honor Zeus; however, some evidence suggests it could have started as early as the 10th century BC The stadion race was the first event, a 600 foot race. This may have been the only event for the first 13 Olympics They occurred every four years for twelve centuries, until 396 AD; then there was a...