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Data Management

12:54 PM
Melanie Rodier
Melanie Rodier
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Why Data Visualization For Your Emails Can Boost Your Search For Alpha

New research from the UK suggests data visualization should move beyond the trading desk to your inbox.

You’re inundated with dozens of emails, updates from business partners on Twitter and friends on Facebook. And that’s before you’ve even started your work day. The information overload is leading you to subconsciously delay making decisions.

"When we're inundated with emails, Twitter, Facebook, social media, search engines like Google, it's as if we're expected to know more than we actually do, and we can't retain that level of information, that bombardment,” Dr Lynda Shaw, a neuroscience and psychology lecturer at London’s Brunel University says in an article on the BBC news website.

Our brains can’t deal with this information overload and negatively affects productivity, Dr. Shaw says. According to Cisco's Visual Networking Index, the BBC reports, average global IP traffic in 2015 will reach 245 terabytes per second, equivalent to 200m people streaming an HD movie at the same time every day.

Wall Street has been increasingly implementing data visualization technologies for its traders over the past 18 months, on the shoulders of the rising worldwide adoption of automated trading strategies and on-demand access to global markets. It can be a highly valuable tool for traders who often follow between 100 and 150 stocks.

[For more on Data Visualization for the Capital Markets, see related story.] Now, new research has now proved that data visualization used for your most basic work tools will boost your productivity – and free your mind up to potentially focus on your search for alpha.

In a lab in the south of the UK, a group of people have had their brainwaves scanned while completing a series of tasks, individually and in groups, to see if data visualisation - in this case a series of mind maps - can help, the BBC reports.

“The results showed that when tasks were presented visually rather than using traditional text-based software applications, individuals used around 20% less cognitive resources. In other words, their brains were working a lot less hard.

As a result, they performed more efficiently, and could remember more of the information when asked later.

Working in groups, they used 10% less mental resources.” The research was carried out by Mindlab International, an independent research company that specializes in neurometrics - the science of measuring patterns of brain activity through EEG, eye tracking and skin conductivity, which tracks emotions.

From the BBC:

"The key reason we do the work that we do is that most of our decision making, yours and mine, goes on in the subconscious, or auto pilot or whatever we call it. Our cognitive brain can't actually deal with the bombardment of messages that are streamed to our bodies constantly all the time," says Duncan Smith, Mindlab International's managing director.

Individuals and groups had their brainwaves monitored as they completed tasks using visual mapping software compared with traditional applications "We did expect that visual mapping would perform better purely and simply because this is the way the brain is wired up. We don't work as a filling cabinet, we don't work in a linear fashion," says Mr Smith.

"If you present data visually it has much more impact and the brain finds it much easier to process."

Melanie Rodier has worked as a print and broadcast journalist for over 10 years, covering business and finance, general news, and film trade news. Prior to joining Wall Street & Technology in April 2007, Melanie lived in Paris, where she worked for the International Herald ... View Full Bio
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