Industry is screwy. My perspective is always from heavy industry, where we consider upgrading to PLCs that run on Pentium 90 architecture _amazing_. There's goo

Industry is screwy. My perspective is always from heavy industry, where we consider upgrading to PLCs that run on Pentium 90 architecture _amazing_. There's good reason for that reactionism; never fix what ain't broke. But the same philosophy is used in the softer analytics, where using state of the art really is better. Sure giant clunky Excel sheets _work_, but we can build far better charting tools. We can run statistics easier than MiniTab. Data can be interactive, searchable, and computable instead of rituals and incantations to lousy proprietary one-off enterprise buzz-word-a-tron programs. We _could_ be using analytical tools that shape themselves to the data. Instead, we have to convince management that it's _possible_ to analyze and map data easily in these new ways. But once they see how much more powerful these ideas are - how much faster and cheaper they work - lower mgt. is thrilled. And if upper management is profit oriented, they'll like it too.