Futzing and Moseying: Interviews with Professional Data Analysts on Exploration Practices

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 22 - 31
• Main Authors: Alspaugh, Sara, Zokaei, Nava, Liu, Andrea, Jin, Cindy, Hearst, Marti A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01-01-2019; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Business intelligence; Data analysis; Data science; Data visualization; EDA; Exploration; exploratory data analysis; interview study; Interviews; Python; visual analytics tools
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2018.2865040

We report the results of interviewing thirty professional data analysts working in a range of industrial, academic, and regulatory environments. This study focuses on participants' descriptions of exploratory activities and tool usage in these activities. Highlights of the findings include: distinctions between exploration as a precursor to more directed analysis versus truly open-ended exploration; confirmation that some analysts see "finding something interesting" as a valid goal of data exploration while others explicitly disavow this goal; conflicting views about the role of intelligent tools in data exploration; and pervasive use of visualization for exploration, but with only a subset using direct manipulation interfaces. These findings provide guidelines for future tool development, as well as a better understanding of the meaning of the term "data exploration" based on the words of practitioners "in the wild".