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Introduction

I did it to you again! I used a specific technique to get your attention, in an attempt to make you click on that article title. That technique is called clickbait, and I used this technique in my previous article!

In this case, I will not withhold the “bait”. Since you are already here, let me tell you a story about why I tested this clickbait method. I promise to also give you some worthwhile information.

Background

There is a person who is called Tamino (real name: Grant Foster), and he writes a great blog called “Open Mind“. Open Mind is dedicated to the quantitative study of global warming. I have been reading this blog for at least a couple of years but it has existed for many years before that.

For a long time, I didn’t know who wrote “Open Mind”. I knew the person was mathematically talented. Once I saw the name Grant Foster, my brain immediately remembered the old Foster Grant commercials I saw as a kid! Now I know that Grant Foster is the statistician hiding behind those Foster Grants!

More than a decade ago, before it was known that Grant Foster was the author of Open Mind, the Yale Climate Connections blog had this to say about the author Tamino. Here is a summary:

Like many bloggers, Tamino cloaks her/his real identity, though it’s known that Tamino is a mathematician who works primarily with time series analysis. The Tamino “Open Mind” blog, addresses such issues as:

• how scientists know that current atmospheric CO2 increases are man-made;
• how natural variation affects the climate;
• how scientists know that solar forcings are not driving current warming;
• how fast CO2 is increasing in the earth’s atmosphere;
• and other important climate topics.

Whereas I ask my readers to decide for themselves about global warming by showing the data I’ve analyzed, Tamino is extremely passionate in his beliefs and does an exemplary job explaining the detailed statistics and mathematics he uses to develop his ideas and to debunk the B.S. arguments proposed by the climate skeptics. He uses clear language to explain the assumptions, uncertainties, and potential limitations of the methods that he uses.

I really like him because on any given day he isn’t afraid to go toe-to-toe to battle the climate skeptics. Tamino wears his global warming passion like a party crown. He is cool, and a part of me wants to have his feistiness and bold approach to blogging. Now it is time for me to explain why I have introduced Tamino.

It Was Five Days Ago When…

Five days ago, Tamino wrote this article, whose title is shown in Figure 1.

 

After reading this article, I fell asleep and the concept of clickbaiting went viral in my brain during the night! At some time in the future, I will read the book Tamino references in that article to learn more about the techniques contained within, even though I don’t really want to use them again. The next morning I awoke and wrote that silly article about Tableau Zen Masters because I knew that my ideas would be gone from memory before lunch if I hadn’t written the article.

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Why Did I Pick The Zen Master Topic?

First of all, becoming a Tableau Zen Master is something that is bestowed upon a very select group of individuals, and it is a very big honor. It is not something that you can obtain via negotiation, via a purchase, or even via a bribe (Hey Andy, I noticed the check hasn’t cleared yet)!

In fact, the only people that talk about becoming Zen Masters are the people that have been given the title. This is certainly a select group of highly talented people and anyone named a Zen Master should be proud of the accomplishment. This title means that they have spent a significant amount of time pursuing their passions within Tableau and that they have a willingness to help others do the same.

The Zen Master title doesn’t come easy, and the prestige it implies lasts a lifetime. Therefore, this topic made perfect sense for me to test using clickbait because it is somewhat of a Taboo subject. While in my sleep, my brain searched for the most outlandish topic it could find regarding Tableau, and that article was created. I proclaim that I had no control over the choice of the topic!

For anyone to write an absurd article like I did is completely contrary to the premise of becoming a Zen Master. The whole Zen Master methodology is enshrouded in secrecy and the winners are usually humble worker bees within the Tableau community. Nobody I have ever seen has had the audacity to write a such a tongue-in-cheek critique of the Zen Master program. It took me a long time to decide to publish that article because I knew it was outlandish and possibly controversial!

To upset the Tableau Zen Master hive like I did, was completely unexpected and was definitely out of character for me. This is why the topic was perfect for a clickbait test. It was so compelling that I had several people write to me asking if I was OK!  That means that the method behind my madness worked!

Now here is the truth: That article was only written as a scientific test, to see if my hypothesis could be verified! It had nothing to do with reality, the truth, or how I feel about my Zen Master friends and the Zen Master program! My topic was designed to be outlandish and to have people ask themselves: “What the hell is he thinking, or I wonder why  he has gotten so mad!”  At the same time, I wanted readers to wonder if the story could be true. Those two goals are not necessarily easy to obtain simultaneously.

At this time, I’m not going to give you the results of the test. That will come later.

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Why Did I Pick The Topic of This Article?

It’s very early on a Monday morning, long before work hours. I had to awake early to write this piece because what I am about to say kept forming in my brain last night.

It has been 1.25 years since I last worked on the Tableau vs Power BI Series of articles. I had to make the decision to stop that work because I got tired of watching Power BI get its ass kicked by Tableau. The competition was designed to be fair but the results were too lopsided to enjoy. It was like watching Pee-Wee Herman trying to box Mike Tyson. I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I quit the testing.

At the time I felt like I had to give Pee-Wee some time for weight training and boxing skill development. I also had to give the Microsoft development team some time to be creative, to make a product that could adequately compete with Tableau. The problem for Microsoft is that they have really big gaps to close. Whereas they might have hundreds of developers, Tableau has their own developers plus hundreds of zealots in the community that are tirelessly working to extend and expand the reach of Tableau.

The one thing that Microsoft probably will not be able to replicate is the community-based frenzy around Tableau. That type of enthusiasm cannot be bought. It also cannot be created in a short amount of time. The software product has to have the chops to create and energize the frenzy. Currently, this type of frenzy is what Alteryx is feeling.

Once people get a taste of greatness, it is hard not to help fuel the passion and be a part of the movement. As far as Power BI goes, I only have one friend that has told me that they really like using it. There are also only two bloggers that I follow for Power BI, versus over 100 bloggers for Tableau. These facts are indicators to me that it is not yet time for me to resume testing Tableau vs Power BI.

If I were interested in increasing the readership of this blog, I would have kept the Tableau vs Power BI testing going. That topic is by far and away the most successful topic I have ever written about. If you know me, however, you know that I do this work to teach, inspire and inform. I have no other motives, including trying to get people to read my articles.

Lastly, I did not write the comparison series because I like Tableau more than Microsoft. It turns out that I like both companies very much. It isn’t a stretch to say that I could have easily worked for either company. In 1988, Microsoft eventually understood my product complaints/insights and tried to hire me.  In 2010, on the other hand, Tableau ignored me when I created my own Tableau job description and submitted it for their consideration.

That job description was written three years before I ever wrote my first Tableau article and it was years before Tableau expanded its staff to perform the functions I outlined. This indicates that I had already understood the future significance of Tableau, long before the company evolved and the community exploded into this vast array of brilliance. Furthermore, Tableau even ignored me when I traveled to a Tableau roadshow in Atlanta during the early days, introducing myself to bigwigs (they shall remain nameless) and emploring them to hire me.

Despite not working for either company, I have consistently used a wide variety of Microsoft products for the past 30+ years. I have also spent the past decade doing exactly what I said I was going to do in my Tableau job description. I believe that when you have this type of vision and passion, nothing should stop you from reaching your full potential.

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The Five Ways Power BI is Better Than Tableau

In keeping with my promise of not hiding the bait, here are the five things that me and my Power BI user friends have decided that Power BI currently does better than Tableau.

1. Power BI shows you the number of records that will be displayed when you pick an item in a filter. This helps you make better filter decisions!
2. Power BI is better at crosstabs, pie charts, and word clouds.
3. Power BI is pretty good at dynamic scaling and redrawing of graphical elements. It is also really easy to replicate these elements to use with other measures.
4. Some users adapt to Power BI easily because of the familiarity they have with the Microsoft ribbon concept.
5.  In Power Bi, users can select Q & A from the toolbar and type natural language questions like: “How Many Widgets did we Produce in August 2017?” If the answer is contained within the data set, Power BI will build a visual that answers the question. You can also pre-build Q & A dashboards/visuals for a user to select.

Finally, prior to the release of Tableau Prep, the data prep capabilities of Power BI using DAX were superior to Tableau. Tableau has now significantly closed that gap, although there probably are still more capabilities in Power BI. However, to unlock those capabilities, users must have excellent programming skills and experience, as well as an in-depth knowledge of DAX. For many people, Tableau Prep will be a more intuitive and faster-to-learn data prep tool.

 

Final Thoughts

I will not be writing any more clickbait articles. They tend to make me mad when I see them. I cannot recall how many times I’ve clicked on a CNN article/video only to find that the content shown to me isn’t at all what I expected. For whatever reason, people think that writing viral articles is important. I don’t think so. I’d rather write 100 great training articles than one viral article.

Additionally, I just realized that AdWords were activated (a monetization method) when I switched my blog from 3danim8 to DataBlends. Today I saw that I have earned a whopping 13 cents so far (Figure 2). Needless to say, I’ll be shutting off AdWords to eliminate that noise and I apologize for letting it happen. I hate that aspect of the web, too.