A few weeks ago, Google announced a new feature, Dataset Search, that aims to make it easier for anyone to discover public datasets. Journalists, analysts, and data nerds will likely find Dataset Search useful: it uses metadata to help people discover different versions of a dataset and publications that reference it.

The internet is awash in Venn diagrams of SQL JOINs and explanations of why they're necessary. Though it would be nice if we could answer every data question with a single table, more often than not, to get a complete picture, we need to combine different data sets.

As analysts, we know that each question we ask of our data can be answered with multiple potential languages and toolkits. Each language has its strengths and we've often pondered the distinctions. We've previously examined Group By, window functions and a general framework for thinking in SQL and Python.

If your company is one of the thousands using Salesforce on a daily basis, their customer-relations management (CRM) tool is a treasure-trove of information for your business. This data provides a window into your potential and actual customers— which helps explain why it's one of the first third-party tools we see Mode customers integrating with their data warehouses.

Any time you look for patterns in previous experiences or make a tradeoff between one option and another, you're working with analytical skills. Improving these skills is one of the best investments you can make; you can tackle your own problems at work and get closer to answers for your own questions.

At Mode, we believe everyone is analytical. Any time you look for patterns in previous experiences, or make a tradeoff between one option and another, you're analyzing. The need for analytical skills in the workforce is at an all-time high, and growing. So when we improve our analytical skills, we improve our prospects in the world.