One of my favorite quotes comes from Benny Goodman: SOMETIMES WHEN YOU START LOOSING DETAIL, WHETHER IT'S IN MUSIC OR LIFE, SOMETHING AS SMALL AS FAILING TO BE POLITE, YOU START TO LOOSE SUBSTANCE Even if Benny Goodman did not explicitly mention data decades ago, I experienced that his saying is also true for almost any data-related topic, may it be such as atomic as the choosing of the proper data type or the architecture of an analytical real-time streaming data pipeline. Throughout my professional business life, I have tried to transform data into actionable information and succeeded most of the time (I think there were one or two situations where I failed). My personal feeling is that now is the most exciting time ever (at least so far) in the realm of Data Processing (sometimes called Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Business Analytics, or something completely different). So many fascinating tools enable us to get meaning out of our data. I'm still thrilled by plain SQL, MDX, or DAX statements (after conquering the Evaluation Context), that reveal secrets inside myriads of data (provided that technology is at hand that answers my questions fast enough). The possibilities to wade through Big Data not just using batch processing Map & Reduce scripts but also more responsive SQL statements (e.g., Spark SQL) or using the analytical power of R and Scala make me feel that there are no limits to gaining insight from all our data. Over all the enthusiasm of all things data, I'm trying always to be aware of what  John W. Tukey once said: _"The combination of some data and an aching desire for an answer does not ensure that a reasonable answer can be extracted from a given body of data."_ After all, if there are some findings from the data that I want to keep or share, I'm always trying to make these findings shine and special. Because our visual system is one of the most effective data processing systems (we are still alive because of the fact that we were able to detect the sneaking tiger in the grass), most of the time I will visualize my findings in one way or another. Hence I will write about data visualizations, maybe sometimes from a more general perspective, and sometimes there will be a code involved. I have to admit that my favorite tools are [Power BI](http://www.powerbi.com/ "www.powerbi.com") and [R](https://cran.r-project.org/ "https://cran.r-project.org/") for many reasons; I really enjoy using the combined power of both: scraping information from websites, combining data from a ton of different data sources, using funny algorithms and powerful DAX statements on this data and finally visualize the results. One reason I started writing / blogging is that I learned a lot from the writings of others who willingly shared their insights with the community. If at least one reader will also learn something from this site, I would be honored (so this is my attempt to pay back to the community). A second reason why I'm writing is that I want to resolve my puzzlements about the things happening in this data-driven time, so every comment is welcome (I guess most of them are :-)).  The final reason I started writing is that from my point of view, there is some writing where I disagree, trying to provide a different angle to a special topic. Please keep in mind that these writings only represent my personal point of view and do not necessarily correspond to the opinion of the company I'm working for (even if I'm always trying to make the company adopt my point of view :-)) This was a lot of talking (being precise writing) without revealing much personal information. Here is some personal data: I'm Thomas 'Tom' Martens, but there is no living person who calls me Thomas, except the ones who do not know that I go with Tom. Currently I'm working for MunichRe (https://www.munichre.com) as a Solution Architect among a great team of data driven people. I'm focusing on Power BI and Microsoft Fabric. If I do not work with data, I take pictures, some of my favorites images: https://www.instagram.com/tom68fromhh/ You will find me on twitter, if you look for: https://twitter.com/tommartens68 If you want to get in touch, send me a private message on linkedin: [Thomas Martens | LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tommartens68/) Thanks for reading this and visiting my website, Tom