World events in 2020 put a big spotlight on data. From COVID maps to election updates to economy tracking, many of us kept refreshing data…
Lilianna Hogan
December 22, 2020• 3 minute read
In a new promotion , we’re helping teams build a single source of truth for their companies. As the turn of the year approaches, teams…
Mode
December 22, 2020• 2 minute read
Having an inclusive culture and diverse team is important to us at Mode. To hold ourselves accountable to improve representation at all…
Bailey Douglass
December 16, 2020• 1 minute read
One of the inevitable questions brought to a data analyst at any SaaS company is: how do we use our data to improve our product? At Mode, we…
Maura Ginty
December 8, 2020• 3 minute read
Americans are in the middle of one of the most important government transitions of our lifetimes, but one thing is likely to remain constant…
Derek Steer and Benn Stancil
November 22, 2020• 5 minute read
If you were like me, you spent the week of November 3rd constantly refreshing the live feed from FiveThirtyEight in one browser window and…
Nate Coleman
November 13, 2020• 4 minute read
Back in August, we released Calculated Fields , a feature that allows analysts to work more quickly by performing post-SQL analysis. Now…
Ying Luo
September 23, 2020• 4 minute read
Having an inclusive culture and diverse team is important to us at Mode. To hold ourselves accountable to improve representation at all…
Bailey Douglass
September 15, 2020• 1 minute read
Today we’re launching Python Edge to create a smoother experience when Python library updates occur. See how it works: What is Python Edge…
Hien Phan
August 18, 2020• 1 minute read
Today, we’re launching Explorations: a new feature to help you collaborate with your domain experts for better analysis. See how it works…
Katie Flynn
August 12, 2020• 3 minute read
When we started Mode seven years ago, as the industry was just emerging, it felt impossible to hire a qualified data scientist, let alone…
Derek Steer
August 6, 2020• 2 minute read
Today, we’re launching Calculated Fields to improve your workflow, extend your analysis, and explore data faster. See how it works: What…
Katie Flynn
August 3, 2020• 3 minute read
At Mode, we think a lot about scalability. We know you’re looking for functionality that will help you scale your business, such as more…
Katie Flynn
July 27, 2020• 3 minute read
The data team at Mode loves SQL. We code it, write about it, and empower people to use it all over the world. So, in that vein, we thought…
Nate Coleman
July 23, 2020• 5 minute read
We had the opportunity to sit down with five data leaders from Lyft , Intercom , Patreon , Sisu , and Greenhouse to learn their…
Jessica Schimm
July 15, 2020• 1 minute read
Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is one of the most powerful tools in a data scientist’s pocket. Personally, as someone who…
Julia Glick
June 29, 2020• 2 minute read
Here at Mode, we put a lot of emphasis on writing good, clean SQL. As a collaborative team, it’s important that our queries can be easily…
Joel Carron
June 16, 2020• 4 minute read
The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and countless other victims of police brutality and systemic racism…
Mode
June 5, 2020• 1 minute read
As COVID-19 caused many people to start working from home, we observed an interesting trend: a steep decline in the rate of web traffic to…
Joel Carron
May 27, 2020• 1 minute read
As COVID-19 spread, there were more questions than answers. The first from an SMB customer in the travel sector asking to defer payment…
Lizz Harrell
May 21, 2020• 4 minute read
Happy May! Each month, we share notes that summarize Mode enhancements and bug fixes . This month, we’d also like to share more details of…
Mike DeCarlo
May 5, 2020• 3 minute read
We move fast at Mode. This means we often find ourselves talking a lot about what’s next, but not always about the existing features and…
Sam Novak
April 27, 2020• 5 minute read
Today marks the fourth week that my daughter’s preschool was closed, just hours ahead of the weekend, and days ahead of the official order…
Maura Ginty
April 14, 2020• 3 minute read
In response to COVID-19, many individuals, organizations, and companies are giving back where they can. Acting generously during a time of…
Jessica Schimm
April 9, 2020• 2 minute read
Until last year, I found Slack frustrating, but tolerable. It was a nice place to send all our alerts, and facilitate open conversation and…
Derek Steer
April 8, 2020• 15 minute read
Note: Mode is free to any researcher or organization working with public health or epidemiology models. Same if you’re coordinating…
Bailey Douglass
March 27, 2020• 4 minute read
Note: Mode is free to any researcher or organization working with public health or epidemiology models. Same if you’re coordinating…
Benn Stancil
March 25, 2020• 12 minute read
Friends of Mode, When we founded Mode in 2013, we spelled out our core values . The very first of those values is this: We Don't Work Alone…
Derek Steer
March 19, 2020• 2 minute read
Note: Mode is free to any researcher or organization working with public health or epidemiology models. Same if you’re coordinating…
Maura Ginty
March 12, 2020• 4 minute read
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.“ -- Sayre’s law As data scientists…
Benn Stancil
January 9, 2020• 5 minute read
Exploring the distribution of data can surface meaningful patterns, trends, or significant errors in data that simple summary statistics…
Nate Coleman
December 20, 2019• 6 minute read
Here at Mode, we’ve recently started building a design system to support our organization. Design systems have been a hot topic of…
Anthony Simone
October 29, 2019• 20 minute read
Data strands, divided Since its inception, Mode has been for data scientists and analysts. As former data scientists, my cofounders and I…
Benn Stancil
October 8, 2019• 2 minute read
As an analytics platform, Mode operates in a very contentious space with respect to data protection and privacy. In fact, data analytics and…
Rafae Bhatti
September 30, 2019• 4 minute read
The more insights your data science team can uncover, the more informed decisions your business can make. Below are some quick notes on how…
Benn Stancil
September 19, 2019• 1 minute read
Lars Kamp is the Co-Founder & Chief Data Engineer at intermix.io where he helps customers optimize Amazon Redshift and their analytics…
Lars Kamp
September 17, 2019• 4 minute read
When the idea of instituting regular hack days began at Mode several years ago, it started—as it does for many companies—as a way to break…
Curtis Mitchell
September 16, 2019• 3 minute read
What is the most efficient way to wrap your head around an unfamiliar codebase? There are lots of fantastic options. Some examples: you can…
Max Edmands
September 9, 2019• 4 minute read
At Mode, we have an interview question we often use during phone screens for engineering candidates which is “What is an example of a…
Ushashi Chakraborty
August 25, 2019• 5 minute read
Josh Ferguson , Cofounder and Chief Architect at Mode, recently gave a talk at Data Council introducing our framework for building data…
Paul Thurlow
August 19, 2019• 1 minute read
An engineering take At Mode, we make decisions while staying true to our company values. We asked few of our engineers and engineering…
Ushashi Chakraborty
August 5, 2019• 4 minute read
A data model defines how an organization's various data sources are organized, related, and accessed. As data sources are added and…
Joel Carron
May 2, 2019• 3 minute read
As a long-time member of Mode's success team, I've had countless conversations with customers looking for ways to automate common tasks and…
Leqi Long
March 27, 2019• 2 minute read
Even the most sophisticated analysis is no match for an apathetic audience. If the human at the other end of the table doesn't care about…
Benn Stancil
March 5, 2019• 2 minute read
We recently went through a common process at Mode; we considered bringing on a new tool for our data infrastructure. While those of us on…
Benn Stancil
February 14, 2019• 2 minute read
There's a fundamental change taking place in the way that organizations make decisions. For analysts and data scientists, the days of being…
Derek Steer
February 12, 2019• 2 minute read
Last week, I urged data science teams to focus on delivering value quickly and iteratively (thanks to Ian Blumenfeld for highlighting…
Benn Stancil
January 24, 2019• 2 minute read
One of the most common reasons an organization reaches out to Mode is that they're about to begin investing in analytics, and they want our…
Benn Stancil
January 14, 2019• 5 minute read
Analysts often assume that the best way to advance their careers or provide more value is to improve their technical chops. While it's true…
Derek Steer
December 4, 2018• 10 minute read
The World Chess Championship 2018, a match between reigning champion Magnus Carlsen and challenger Fabiano Caruana , just came to a…
Joel Carron
November 28, 2018• 4 minute read
When we talk to analytics teams about what they're working on and what big projects are coming up, this is a common refrain we hear: “Right…
Benn Stancil
November 2, 2018• 2 minute read
In case you missed it, we launched a free product earlier this year, Mode Studio . Free products aren't common in the world of analytics…
Benn Stancil
October 25, 2018• 8 minute read
Anytime you look for patterns in previous experiences, or make a tradeoff between one option and another, you're analyzing something. This…
Derek Steer
September 25, 2018• 2 minute read
A few weeks ago, Google announced a new feature, Dataset Search , that aims to make it easier for anyone to discover public datasets…
Asha Hill
September 18, 2018• 8 minute read
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…
Sadavath Sharma
September 12, 2018• 7 minute read
As analysts, we know that each question we ask of our data can be answered with multiple potential languages and toolkits. Each language has…
Sadavath Sharma
August 30, 2018• 5 minute read
If your company is one of the thousands using Salesforce on a daily basis, their customer-relations management (CRM) tool is a treasure…
Sadavath Sharma
August 16, 2018• 5 minute read
Any time you look for patterns in previous experiences or make a tradeoff between one option and another, you're working with analytical…
Liam Hausmann
August 14, 2018• 4 minute read
At Mode, we believe everyone is analytical. Any time you look for patterns in previous experiences, or make a tradeoff between one option…
Liam Hausmann
August 9, 2018• 4 minute read
At Mode, we believe everyone is analytical. Any time you look for patterns in previous experiences, or make a tradeoff between one option…
Liam Hausmann
August 7, 2018• 3 minute read
Before starting Mode, I was an analyst. It's embarrassing to admit, but at the time, I thought I had all the answers. I thought that being…
Derek Steer
July 30, 2018• 3 minute read
Some subtle, yet significant updates from the last quarter We are always looking for ways to improve Mode. Sometimes this means adding…
Katie Lane
July 25, 2018• 2 minute read
What makes an analytics team great? To find out, we interviewed the leaders of three: Maura Church , Senior Data Science Manager at…
Tayler Mehit
July 18, 2018• 5 minute read
Between the thousands of data scientists, analysts and others who use Mode every day, and the hundreds of companies that run their…
Derek Steer
July 11, 2018• 4 minute read
Since its introduction in 2007, ggplot2 has become one of the most frequently-downloaded and widely-used R packages in the world. Many…
Asha Hill
July 2, 2018• 13 minute read
For many of Mode's employees, this is their first job at an analytics company. Those team members often assume that Mode's internal…
Tayler Mehit
June 25, 2018• 4 minute read
Jasmine Tsai shares lessons from building and leading Clover Health’s data platform. Jasmine Tsai got her first taste of data engineering…
Liam Hausmann
June 7, 2018• 7 minute read
If you're an analyst, you probably already know and love the tools made by Plotly . Plotly lets analysts and developers create powerful…
Marissa Gemma
May 30, 2018• 2 minute read
If you've visited the CRAN repository of R packages lately, you might have noticed that the number of available packages has now topped a…
Asha Hill
May 18, 2018• 10 minute read
When Jake Klamka founded Insight Data Science in 2011, the term “data science” had a much different understanding in the private sector…
Liam Hausmann
May 1, 2018• 9 minute read
Among data scientists and analysts, R has long held its own against Python in the battle to determine the “best” analytical programming…
Marissa Gemma
April 25, 2018• 6 minute read
Four years ago, Mode set out to build the best data platform for every analyst in the world. Since then, we've seen more and more people…
Derek Steer
April 17, 2018• 3 minute read
Specialized tooling has proliferated the data engineering community. This trend is growing, and the data infrastructures of modern…
David Wallace
April 10, 2018• 5 minute read
Computational notebooks for data science have exploded in popularity in recent years, and there's a growing consensus that the notebook…
David Wallace
April 2, 2018• 6 minute read
As an academic discipline, data science is bigger than ever, and still growing. Inside Higher Ed recently reported that 303 new accredited…
Marissa Gemma
March 28, 2018• 8 minute read
As an analyst or data scientist, developing a deep understanding of multiple analytical programming languages can create an advantage in…
David Wallace
March 22, 2018• 6 minute read
The collection and analysis of user data by software companies is key part of the product development process. User data is valuable to more…
Emily Ritter
March 19, 2018• 2 minute read
Python's powerful data analysis capabilities are loved the world over . When it comes time to share findings with your team, taking a few…
David Wallace
March 14, 2018• 2 minute read
It's time to add forecasting to your data team's tool kit. Mode notebooks now support Prophet , a powerful forecasting library for Python…
David Wallace
March 6, 2018• 3 minute read
Usage data is like gold for software development teams. Software companies are constantly analyzing user behavior to create valuable insight…
Liam Hausmann
February 28, 2018• 5 minute read
Getting your first job in data science can be a full-time job all on its own. Simply finding a job post worth applying to can be a chaotic…
Sadavath Sharma
February 12, 2018• 7 minute read
Analysts and data scientists with a deep understanding of multiple analytical programming languages find themselves at an advantage in…
David Wallace
February 7, 2018• 11 minute read
So you've built a software product, and you have some users. You're generating data about how users interact with your product. You want to…
Joel Carron
February 1, 2018• 6 minute read
I don’t know about you, but sometimes getting a new report from an analyst feels to me like an exciting holiday morning—or like unboxing an…
Emily Ritter
January 30, 2018• 2 minute read
Working at Mode, I get to talk with a lot of analysts and data scientists. These talks have led to a ton of insightful conversations about…
David Wallace
January 23, 2018• 5 minute read
As an analyst or data scientist, it’s becoming increasingly advantageous to have a deep understanding of multiple analytical programming…
David Wallace
January 23, 2018• 8 minute read
When we introduced White-Label Embeds about a year ago , our goal was to give people the ability to deliver data to their communities in a…
Joel Carron
January 18, 2018• 4 minute read
Eric Mayefsky, head of data science at Quora, has assessed hundreds of job candidates in his half decade in management at various tech…
Liam Hausmann
January 16, 2018• 10 minute read
We here at Mode Analytics have been Amazon Redshift users for about 4 years. Redshift enables and optimizes complex analytical SQL queries…
David Wallace
January 11, 2018• 5 minute read
Just in time to make good on New Year's resolutions, today we're releasing a major upgrade to Mode's Python Notebooks: support for over 2…
Marissa Gemma
January 9, 2018• 2 minute read
In this day and age, every company needs an analytical decision-making culture. Every company needs to be data-driven. And not someday…
David Wallace
January 4, 2018• 3 minute read
This year's annual AWS re:Invent conference was full of exciting product announcements. From long-awaited crowd-pleasers such as Elastic…
David Wallace
December 18, 2017• 4 minute read
Customer success teams are a central pillar of recurring-revenue businesses. Great customer success teams help users get the highest…
Joel Carron
December 14, 2017• 5 minute read
Last year, we launched White-Label Embeds to provide a secure and seamless way to serve data to customers as a part of any application…
Angeline Char
December 12, 2017• 1 minute read
2017 feels like a turning point for the analytics community—everyone seems to be talking about the sudden proliferation of analytics tools…
David Wallace
December 6, 2017• 7 minute read
A few months ago, Stack Overflow confirmed what many people have been predicting for years, and crowned Python king of the software jungle…
Marissa Gemma
November 29, 2017• 7 minute read
Amazon Redshift users got a nice surprise last month when AWS announced their new Dense Compute (DC2) nodes, providing up to twice the…
David Wallace
November 22, 2017• 2 minute read
Mode is the only analytics platform with native support for Python Notebooks . For the last year and a half, Mode users have been rapidly…
Angeline Char
November 21, 2017• 2 minute read
Analysts turn to Mode as the toolkit of choice for their work: SQL and Python-powered data exploration, visualization, and advanced…
David Wallace
November 16, 2017• 2 minute read
Connect Mode to Amazon Athena to explore data stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). An interactive query service that…
Angeline Char
October 26, 2017• 1 minute read
Hiring a data scientist can be a tricky process. The actual definition of “Data Scientist” is vague, the day-to-day job of someone with…
Derek Steer
October 24, 2017• 6 minute read
The applications of color theory in business are vast. One of the most useful applications of color theory is the visualization and…
Samantha Novak
October 12, 2017• 7 minute read
Colors are key to understanding data visualizations. They represent your data and guide people through charts and dashboards, making them…
Angeline Char
October 11, 2017• 2 minute read
Earlier this week, we released visualization filters that allow everyone on Mode to interact more deeply with dashboards to find new…
Angeline Char
September 28, 2017• 2 minute read
Over the last few months, we've been heads down building new power into Mode to help everyone explore data. Earlier this summer we…
Angeline Char
September 26, 2017• 2 minute read
Pairing great data talent with great data jobs As an analyst, finding a great job can be tough. We're all too familiar with this here at…
Liam Hausmann
September 14, 2017• 4 minute read
For most companies, essential data starts its life in all sorts of silos. Many businesses are running on a growing range of SaaS platforms…
Benn Stancil
August 8, 2017• 11 minute read
As it has in previous years , WrangleConf 2017 brought to the foreground some of the most pressing issues for data scientists today…
Cindy Willis-Chun
July 26, 2017• 6 minute read
Phase II of this summer's code-free data exploration rollout is now live: drag-and-drop data exploration. There's a whole new world of…
Emily Ritter
July 13, 2017• 3 minute read
A couple of weeks ago we announced a series of new code-free data exploration features to let everyone find answers hidden in data. The…
Emily Ritter
May 31, 2017• 3 minute read
There's a common misconception that an analyst's work is lonely. That we're mad scientists off in a corner somewhere crunching numbers in…
Derek Steer
May 16, 2017• 2 minute read
Designing dashboards for display around the office introduces unique challenges for effectively communicating insights. The dashboards need…
Nick Binder
May 11, 2017• 2 minute read
Dashboards. They're the best way to keep every team focused on goals and provide critical context for your business as a whole. While not…
Nick Binder
May 3, 2017• 2 minute read
Analysts at companies of all sizes are pushing beyond ordinary dashboards and charts, using custom data visualizations to deliver high…
Nick Binder
April 6, 2017• 2 minute read
You might not have heard of Eko, but chances are you’ve interacted with their content. Eko has pioneered the medium of interactive video…
Drew Banin
April 5, 2017• 4 minute read
From streamgraphs to voronoi to polar clocks , there's essentially no limit to the types of data visualizations you can make with the…
Melissa Bierly
March 14, 2017• 6 minute read
Presenting data effectively is a critical part of communicating insights. Making reports look appealing or building interactive charts isn't…
Nick Binder
March 9, 2017• 3 minute read
Analysts know that having the right numbers is only half the battle. In order for your work to make an impact, it has to be presented in a…
Joel Carron
March 7, 2017• 3 minute read
The best analysts know that charts alone are not always enough to inform decisions. Even the most amazing chart of all time can be left open…
Nick Binder
March 2, 2017• 2 minute read
Our partner Stitch is introducing Singer : an open source project for simple, composable ETL. Singer enables any data source to be analyzed…
Emily Ritter
March 1, 2017• 2 minute read
Mode's new SQL-powered pivot tables are designed to give everyone the ability to instantly explore shared data sets. But a pivot table is…
Jennifer Chu
February 28, 2017• 4 minute read
Today we're rolling out two new updates for Mode Python Notebooks, making Python analysis more efficient and accessible to everyone. With…
Nick Binder
February 23, 2017• 3 minute read
When trying to understand a data set, analysis often starts broad and narrows as you go. SQL is perfect for pulling the broad data set and…
Nick Binder
February 14, 2017• 2 minute read
Now that the Mode SQL editor supports running multiple SQL statements , you can do so much more than pull data back from the database. One…
Joel Carron
February 8, 2017• 7 minute read
Keeping work organized is hard. It's time consuming to ensure everything is in the right place and clearly labeled. Plus, if you're not sure…
Nick Binder
February 2, 2017• 3 minute read
New York City is home to 24,000 restaurants. If you dine at a different eatery every day, it will take you 65 years to visit all of them…
Joel Carron
February 1, 2017• 3 minute read
Back in December, we brought customers 12 new features in 12 days , including the highly requested Mode Slack app . People are now sharing…
Emily Ritter
January 31, 2017• 1 minute read
On December 20th, 2016, the day the Electoral College made Trump's presidency official, we sent this internal letter to the Mode team. Now…
Mode
January 30, 2017• 2 minute read
Sometimes, your customers need a little nudge to engage more deeply with your product. This can happen for a whole host of reasons…
Melissa Bierly
January 12, 2017• 4 minute read
We just capped off 12 days of new features, but we couldn't resist adding one more before the holidays! As the year comes to a close and…
Nick Binder
December 20, 2016• 2 minute read
We launched Definitions back in September to help analysts save time writing queries and establish trusted business logic across projects…
Nick Binder
December 16, 2016• 2 minute read
Today we're releasing the #1 most requested SQL editor feature: support for multiple SQL statements in one query. Hello, temp tables…
Nick Binder
December 15, 2016• 1 minute read
Over the past 10 days we've added four powerful new ways to share analysis: Slack , email upgrades , external sharing , and White-Label…
Nick Binder
December 14, 2016• 1 minute read
The Mode Slack App is here! Now it's easier than ever to put timely, relevant data into the hands of decision makers, right when and where…
Emily Ritter
December 13, 2016• 1 minute read
Email is still a mainstay for communication and sharing ideas, even if it feels like it's going the way of the dinosaur. Whether it's ad hoc…
Nick Binder
December 12, 2016• 1 minute read
Analysis isn’t just about finding the insights—it’s about delivering them to your coworkers. And often the biggest challenge is helping…
Nick Binder
December 11, 2016• 3 minute read
It's easy to get swept up in the latest design trend. Remember when everyone was into skeuomorphism ? Long shadows ? All caps cursive…
Blake Reary
December 10, 2016• 1 minute read
⌘-Z! ⌘-Z! We've all been there. Sometimes, ⌘-Z doesn't take you back far enough. And sometimes, it's not a matter of undoing—but comparing…
Nick Binder
December 9, 2016• 1 minute read
As your business grows, so too does the list of people outside your company who need to access to data and reporting. Financials for…
Nick Binder
December 8, 2016• 2 minute read
As consumers, we're increasingly accustomed to seeing data served back to us as features in the apps and products we use day in and day out…
Emily Ritter
December 7, 2016• 3 minute read
Today, as part of our effort to deliver 12 highly requested “Wish List” features in 12 days, we're adding highlight to run to the SQL editor…
Nick Binder
December 6, 2016• 1 minute read
From highly-requested SQL editor upgrades, to tools to share analysis with everyone in your organization (and beyond), we're about to…
Nick Binder
December 5, 2016• 1 minute read
Last week, we examined HBO's original series Westworld with charts showing the relationships between characters , whom they mention…
Joel Carron
November 22, 2016• 3 minute read
For the past seven weeks, a corner of the internet has been obsessed with the HBO original series Westworld . Redditors have spent hours…
Joel Carron
November 15, 2016• 5 minute read
Clinton and Trump are two of the most unpopular presidential nominees in U.S. history. That made us wonder: Would we be better off if a…
Joel Carron
November 3, 2016• 3 minute read
Sometimes the median and mean aren't enough to understand a dataset. Are most of the values clustered around the median? Or are they…
Joel Carron
October 26, 2016• 5 minute read
Timestamps are crucial to business analysis for a very simple reason: they tell you when things happen. Imagine trying to suss out trends in…
Joel Carron
October 20, 2016• 10 minute read
Regardless of the size or purpose of your company, customer service (or success or support) is a crucial part of your customer lifecycle…
Kostas Pardalis
October 18, 2016• 9 minute read
OUTSIZED OUTLIER How One 19-Year-Old Illinois Man Is Distorting National Polling Averages This deep-dive into the methodology of an election…
Nick Binder
October 17, 2016• 2 minute read
Last month we launched our new Spaces feature to make it easier to organize reports around teams and projects. Analysts quickly found a…
Nick Binder
October 13, 2016• 1 minute read
According to data visualization expert Andy Kirk , there are two types of data visualizations: exploratory and explanatory. The aim of…
Melissa Bierly
October 12, 2016• 6 minute read
DOH! The Simpsons by the Data America's favorite family has been around for 27 years, providing plenty of data to analyze. Find out who's…
Nick Binder
October 10, 2016• 2 minute read
Anyone who has tried to learn SQL knows it's tricky to get the hang of joins . You're breezing through SELECT statements and comparison…
Joel Carron
October 4, 2016• 7 minute read
AND THE NOMINEES ARE... Kantar Information Is Beautiful Awards - Shortlist The shortlist for the Kantar Information Is Beautiful Awards has…
Nick Binder
October 3, 2016• 2 minute read
Problem Analytics are hard to get right – especially for complex business models (like API-first SaaS). Building a flexible analytics stack…
Luke Whiting
September 30, 2016• 4 minute read
Where do you get your data science news? Twitter? Reddit? Social media is a great way to discover new articles, podcasts, and videos, but it…
Melissa Bierly
September 26, 2016• 5 minute read
ONE POLL, FOUR RESULTS We Gave Four Good Pollsters the Same Raw Data. They Had Four Different Results. Dig into the methodology of four…
Nick Binder
September 26, 2016• 3 minute read
As a demand generation marketer, I'm constantly searching for the right mix of ad platforms and publishers to bring in leads. But when each…
Alexa Guerra
September 22, 2016• 7 minute read
DROPPIN' BEATS Visualizing Hundreds of My Favorite Songs on Spotify A deep statistical dive into defining songs with attributes—such as…
Melissa Bierly
September 19, 2016• 2 minute read
Since the beginning, one of Mode's goals has been to make simple things easy and complex things possible. In the past year, we added on data…
Melissa Bierly
September 15, 2016• 9 minute read
Anybody who's ever tried writing code of any kind knows that style matters. Caps or no caps? CamelCase or use_underscores? Tabs or spaces…
Nick Binder
September 13, 2016• 2 minute read
From the start, Mode's goal has been to make data more accessible. When analysts and their business partners work together on one data…
Nick Binder
September 12, 2016• 2 minute read
ASK ME ANOTHER Asking good questions is hard (but worth it) Although this framework is written from a programmer's perspective, it's a great…
Melissa Bierly
September 12, 2016• 2 minute read
A trio of new features is launching today: Definitions, Spaces, and Access Controls are all designed to create a tight-knit data culture by…
Emily Ritter
September 8, 2016• 3 minute read
When analysts create reports for teams throughout their company, there are inevitable follow-up questions. Engagement is higher on mobile…
Nick Binder
August 31, 2016• 2 minute read
You've probably heard of the Pareto principle, even if you didn't realize it at the time. Here are a few examples: 80% of web traffic comes…
Joel Carron
August 30, 2016• 5 minute read
The real world is messy, and so too is its data. So messy, that a recent survey reported data scientists spend 60% of their time cleaning…
Melissa Bierly
August 23, 2016• 5 minute read
EASY AS 1, 2, 3? 3 Reasons Counting is the Hardest Thing in Data Science Counting isn't technically difficult; the real challenge lies in…
Melissa Bierly
August 22, 2016• 2 minute read
For folks hoping to make a career switch to data science, there are a ton of questions to tackle: Which languages should I learn? Which…
Melissa Bierly
August 16, 2016• 11 minute read
MUST-READ What I Wish I Knew About Data For Startups One entrepreneur reflects on his learnings from four years of working with data at a…
Melissa Bierly
August 15, 2016• 3 minute read
At the end of the day, a key job of any analytics team is to effectively communicate data and insights, with the goal of driving informed…
Nick Binder
August 11, 2016• 2 minute read
Today we're excited to announce Mode's new integration with DataVault from Tenjin , a company focused on providing marketers insight into…
Emily Ritter
August 10, 2016• 1 minute read
ENGAGE! Star Trek Viz Explore this network visualization of the entire Star Trek universe (except for Star Trek: Beyond ). Filter by…
Melissa Bierly
August 8, 2016• 3 minute read
Source: Sam Charrington via Twitter For the second year in a row, WrangleConf did not disappoint. The conversation picked up right where…
Derek Steer
August 2, 2016• 6 minute read
Last October, our friends at RJMetrics introduced the beta version of their ETL service, RJMetrics Pipeline. Today, they've officially taken…
Emily Ritter
August 1, 2016• 2 minute read
SPIN DOCTORS Our nine-point guide to spotting a dodgy statistic Numbers might appear unwavering and objective, but they're easily…
Melissa Bierly
August 1, 2016• 2 minute read
It all started with a tweet. And just like that—after stints at AOL, ThisLife, and Shutterfly—Romy Macasieb became the first product manager…
Melissa Bierly
July 26, 2016• 7 minute read
There are many of us—errr, people —who build stuff with Legos at all ages . Having grown up with loads of hand-me-down Legos (and having a…
Joel Carron
July 21, 2016• 8 minute read
Sometimes communicating data is as simple as sharing out a basic chart. Sometimes telling an impactful data story means creating a knock-out…
Joel Carron
July 14, 2016• 2 minute read
Today we're excited to announce Mode's integration with Heap , a powerful platform that enables you to build analytics infrastructure for…
Emily Ritter
July 12, 2016• 2 minute read
Over the years, I've used a variety of languages and tools to analyze data. As I think back on my time using each tool, I've come to realize…
Benn Stancil
July 7, 2016• 8 minute read
When writers hit a block, they read. When musicians get stuck, they seek stimulation by listening to music. It's the same with any craft…
Melissa Bierly
June 28, 2016• 7 minute read
As your business grows, maintaining excellent customer service requires delivering high-quality solutions efficiently and effectively. But…
Joel Carron
June 23, 2016• 8 minute read
No matter how you're looking to present your data, there's a seemingly endless number of Python libraries and resources to use (check out…
Nick Binder
June 21, 2016• 2 minute read
In our previous blog post , we covered some of the exploratory analysis we did for Highfive, a modern meeting room collaboration and video…
Sourav Dey
June 16, 2016• 8 minute read
Sometimes you just need to share a data set. A list of app users who meet certain criteria. A call list for a sales team. You get the idea…
Nick Binder
June 15, 2016• 2 minute read
Scroll through the Python Package Index and you'll find libraries for practically every data visualization need—from GazeParser for eye…
Melissa Bierly
June 8, 2016• 9 minute read
Presenting new data always raises more questions than it answers. Your coworkers want to better understand results to inform decision-making…
Joel Carron
June 2, 2016• 8 minute read
Sourav Dey is a Partner at DataHoliks , a data-science consulting firm founded to help organizations apply data science without committing…
Sourav Dey
May 26, 2016• 7 minute read
Since day one, Mode has been a product built by analysts, for analysts. As analysts, we're at our best when free to uncover unexpected…
Derek Steer
May 23, 2016• 3 minute read
Intronis CEO Rick Faulk argues that there are three key benefits of total transparency at your company: Employee trust and buy-in A more…
Melissa Bierly
May 19, 2016• 6 minute read
Despite the fact that retention is key for SaaS and mobile growth , there's very little consensus on the factors that indicate good…
Melissa Bierly
April 27, 2016• 6 minute read
Head over to the Report Builder to check out a few new features that will make it easier to present a data story beautifully. Rather than…
Emily Ritter
April 14, 2016• 1 minute read
With the emergence of data integration tools it's easier than ever to get your hands on consolidated data from third-party tools. Access to…
Melissa Bierly
April 13, 2016• 6 minute read
Did Sheila get the answer she needed when she emailed our support team? Did Joe spend more in store this trip compared to last trip? Did…
Emily Ritter
April 6, 2016• 2 minute read
Head over to Twitch on any given day and you'll find 250,000 broadcasters live streaming content to more than two million concurrent…
Melissa Bierly
April 5, 2016• 10 minute read
The Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) tool is your sales organization's second brain. It's a memory bank filled with every…
Melissa Bierly
March 29, 2016• 8 minute read
Retention. It's the quiet force behind your product's growth . With bad retention, acquisition efforts fill a leaky bucket. Great retention…
Benn Stancil
March 17, 2016• 11 minute read
We recently talked about ways to set your customers up to be successful, long-term users of your product . By identifying strong audiences…
Benn Stancil
March 9, 2016• 5 minute read
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? We're not entirely sure. What we do know is that if…
Emily Ritter
March 3, 2016• 2 minute read
This is the first installment of our new “Ask the Analyst” series. We'll be interviewing analysts from various industries to get the inside…
Melissa Bierly
March 2, 2016• 7 minute read
Yesterday, we explored how brands use colors on Instagram . Today, we're looking at trends in Instagram's early-adopter photographer…
Melissa Bierly
February 24, 2016• 4 minute read
Starbucks green. UPS brown. Target red. Some of the most recognized brands have built their visual identity on just one color. They create…
Melissa Bierly
February 23, 2016• 3 minute read
Retention has long played second fiddle to user acquisition. It's easy to see why: getting new users is fun and can feel impressive (5,00…
Melissa Bierly
February 2, 2016• 4 minute read
Sometimes you just want to put two charts next to each other. Now you can. Today we're rolling out a new drag-and-drop report builder that…
Emily Ritter
January 21, 2016• 2 minute read
If you use Excel at work, you're probably frustratingly familiar with this dialog box: You've probably also worked on a spreadsheet that was…
Melissa Bierly
January 19, 2016• 10 minute read
In 2015, people used Mode to answer thousands of questions. As we looked back on the year, we were curious about trends across companies…
Melissa Bierly
January 14, 2016• 4 minute read
When it comes to distributing analysis, it can be helpful to put data where folks discover it over the natural course of their day. For some…
Emily Ritter
January 8, 2016• 2 minute read
Like the analysts who use Mode day-in and day-out to answer some of the hardest questions a business can throw at them, we hammer on our…
Emily Ritter
December 17, 2015• 3 minute read
Anyone who's used Salesforce is familiar with its reporting dashboard. The deal pipeline, the closed deals speedometer, the reps' activities…
Melissa Bierly
December 11, 2015• 9 minute read
Which database is best? The question, obviously, depends on what you want to use it for. I, like most analysts, want to use a database to…
Benn Stancil
December 9, 2015• 6 minute read
In October, we launched our new product, RJMetrics Pipeline . Pipeline integrates data from all the systems you use to run your business…
David Wallace
December 3, 2015• 6 minute read
Nearly a year ago we wrote about the questions folks should consider when making early analytics hires . While those questions are helpful…
Melissa Bierly
December 1, 2015• 4 minute read
There’s a pretty cool marriage of tech and health going on right now. You can see it on the “about” page of so many of the Rock Health…
Emily Ritter
November 20, 2015• 3 minute read
The moving average is the Swiss Army knife of metrics. It's adaptable, reliable, and simple to use. Stock traders know this better than…
Saul Jackman
November 12, 2015• 5 minute read
Parsed UTM parameters mean squeaky clean campaign data for analysis. Check out our entire series of #datapointers here. -- Is email or…
Emily Ritter
November 4, 2015• 6 minute read
On my first day at Mode, I was given a list of basic business questions to answer. How many SQL queries do our customers write each day? How…
Saul Jackman
October 29, 2015• 9 minute read
There's an interesting discussion happening in the Silicon Valley data science community. Last week about 100 data scientists gathered for…
Derek Steer
October 26, 2015• 4 minute read
On Wednesday over 500 members of the data science community gathered at the Village in San Francisco for CrowdFlower’s Rich Data Summit…
Melissa Bierly
October 16, 2015• 4 minute read
In a world of ever expanding data streams , we rely on timestamps to organize data down to the millisecond. But this level of detail can be…
Saul Jackman
October 6, 2015• 4 minute read
Understanding how your data is distributed is critical for any analysis. Box-and-whisker plots are great for summarizing distributions and…
Benn Stancil
October 1, 2015• 7 minute read
Analyzing datasets that include email addresses can be a pain. But when armed with a few common operations, you can clean your data quickly…
Benn Stancil
September 24, 2015• 3 minute read
An old baseball coach of mine used to say “that's a million-dollar catch and a ten-cent throw” (adapted from a famous Bull Durham quote…
Benn Stancil
September 10, 2015• 2 minute read
Today we're announcing our $7.5 Million Series A, led by Foundation Capital . Steve Vassallo is joining our board of our directors and we…
Derek Steer
August 20, 2015• 2 minute read
Our friends over at Amplitude have a unique approach to event tracking and analytics for mobile apps. Like some analytics tools out there…
Emily Ritter
June 2, 2015• 3 minute read
For people who analyze customer behavior, the table above is a familiar one. This Mixpanel chart measures retention rates across different…
Benn Stancil
May 11, 2015• 4 minute read
Charts. We love them. And while we prefer actual pie to pie charts , we're excited to serve up a delicious new set of chart types a la Mode…
Emily Ritter
April 15, 2015• 1 minute read
When we launched Mode's new SQL workflow earlier this year, we said there would be a lot to come on the charting front. Today the first…
Emily Ritter
March 31, 2015• 3 minute read
An analyst's daily work can get repetitive. One day a request from a product manager can sound like: “Hi Derek, could you please pull the…
Derek Steer
March 27, 2015• 5 minute read
A lot of product questions are based on the idea of a user “session.” What do users do when they first log in? In what order do users take…
Benn Stancil
March 20, 2015• 7 minute read
Asking questions is easy. It's so easy that, as askers, we often don't think about the quality of our questions. Poorly framed questions…
Derek Steer
March 18, 2015• 3 minute read
People often talk about a startup's evolution in terms of funding, sales , or product engagement milestones . But companies also change…
Derek Steer
March 12, 2015• 6 minute read
How we used data to help Watsi find sustainable strategies for funding worldwide healthcare. Our friends over at Segment recently came to…
Benn Stancil
March 6, 2015• 1 minute read
Now you can use Mode to analyze data in Apache Hive, Cloudera Impala, Google BigQuery, and HP Vertica! As more teams get up and running…
Emily Ritter
February 17, 2015• 2 minute read
CrowdFlower , the leading data enrichment platform, helps data scientists collect, clean, and label data. Their on-demand workforce tackles…
Emily Ritter
February 13, 2015• 2 minute read
When we launched Mode's public beta in June 2014 , we knew we were putting an MVP (minimum viable product) editor into the wild. As soon as…
Benn Stancil
February 6, 2015• 5 minute read
Mode recently released a big update to our collaborative analytics tool. The new features were informed by a careful combination of…
Blake Reary
February 6, 2015• 5 minute read
We're on a mission to build analysis software that works the way today's analysts work. And that means building tools an analyst can share…
Emily Ritter
February 5, 2015• 2 minute read
Many leading tech companies have promoted “aha moments”—the instant a user understands the value of their product—as a key to growth. Most…
Benn Stancil
January 30, 2015• 6 minute read
Over the course of a startup's lifetime, a company can face a range of data challenges. In the beginning, startup founders do most analysis…
Derek Steer
January 27, 2015• 6 minute read
Building a successful analytics team requires investment in everything from people and tools to infrastructure and event tracking. But the…
Derek Steer
January 21, 2015• 5 minute read
Emily Ritter
November 5, 2014• 3 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 26, 2014• 6 minute read
Emily Ritter
September 24, 2014• 2 minute read
Emily Ritter
September 15, 2014• 2 minute read
layout: mode title: "Meet Mode at DataWeek" author: "Emily Ritter" authortwitter: "emilyarden" authortitle: "Marketing at Mode" date: 201…
Emily Ritter
September 10, 2014• 2 minute read
Emily Ritter
August 8, 2014• 2 minute read
The world is full of interesting datasets . But even though data is increasingly accessible, it's sometimes hard think up an interesting…
Benn Stancil
July 23, 2014• 15 minute read
Several years ago, I made the jump from being an Washington, D.C. policy analyst to a data analyst at a San Francisco tech company. Prior to…
Benn Stancil
July 8, 2014• 3 minute read
The world is producing fascinating data at an unprecedented pace, on subjects ranging from air quality in Chicago, to the economics of…
Derek Steer
June 17, 2014• 2 minute read
Benn Stancil
February 6, 2014• 5 minute read
Benn Stancil
February 2, 2014• 3 minute read
Benn Stancil
January 24, 2014• 5 minute read
Benn Stancil
December 16, 2013• 2 minute read
Benn Stancil
November 28, 2013• 9 minute read
Benn Stancil
November 13, 2013• 6 minute read
Benn Stancil
November 4, 2013• 4 minute read
Benn Stancil
October 17, 2013• 7 minute read
Benn Stancil
October 9, 2013• 2 minute read
Benn Stancil
October 3, 2013• 5 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 30, 2013• 3 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 25, 2013• 7 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 18, 2013• 6 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 12, 2013• 5 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 9, 2013• 5 minute read
Benn Stancil
September 3, 2013• 5 minute read