Tabs as an Analysis Tool

A Focus on Tabs

In addition to surveys being overworked as a data collection method, cross-tabulations of the data, or simply “the tabs,” are equally overworked as the primary analysis tool. A client once told me that “Everything you need to know is in the tabs.” In my opinion, this sums up the prevalent view of market researchers.
Tabs are quite often printed in books with voluminous pages and 8-point font. They’re predefined once the survey is designed with a complex set of programming code generating them, code that becomes difficult to change so that the tabs are usually unchangeable; i.e., they’re static. This has an important implication for data analysis: you can’t look at rearrangements or reconfigurations ...

Get Market Data Analysis Using JMP now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.