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Hello world. I’m delighted to launch Deciphered Reality, my look at the data behind Arkham Horror The Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games.

In this first post, I’d like to introduce myself. I think the best way is through a custom investigator, no?

I’m a 100% data geek. I’ve been working for Tableau for 8 years, my role is “Evangelist”: basically, I get paid to make people excited about data, which is an honour and privilege. I’m also the author of The Big Book of Dashboards, which, if you do data analysis at work, then I’d recommend you check it out!

My goal for this blog is to seek answers about AH:LCG by looking at data primarily from ArkhamDB.com.

This means my signature strength could only be: Visual Analytics:

Visual Analytics: my strength!

Trying to solve the mysteries of the mythos would be made easier with a few decent charts, right?

The peril of visual analysis, though, is that you get carried away. Once I go down the rabbit hole of looking at data, it can be hard to stop. There’s so much insight to find; I can lose hours looking at data. And thus, here is my signature weakness, Overwhelmed by Insight:

What other traits do I have? Well, I’m not a fighter. I do keep fit (check out my Strava art!) but I’m more of a shuffler than a sprinter. Thus – good willpower and intellect. Not so good on the combat or agility:

This is me

Yup, with a bit of data, I aim to find out lots of great insights that will help us play the game.

Let me know what you think of the custom investigator cards.

Finally, you might wonder what the site icon is all about. It’s what I use on Twitter (@acotgreave), Facebook, Reddit and Discord:

This awesome picture is from Alfred Yarbus’ seminal eye-tracking research from the 1960s. I do eye-tracking research today. It’s easy: you sit a volunteer in front of an infra-red camera, and it scans your eyes. But not in Yarbus’ day. Oh no: eyes-strapped open, you’d then have a suction cup applied to your eye. That had a prism and lights (and wires) attached to it. “Ten minutes with each volunteer won’t cause much pain,” Yarbus claimed in his book.

More of Yarbus’ eye-tracking “torture” equipment

Yikes! I also think the icon fits the site’s theme pretty well, don’t you think?

So that’s me: data geek and Arkham Horror fan.

What next?

Well – you can go read my first data post: “Who is the worst investigator in the game?“

Click here to find out more

Or subscribe to my feed to keep up to date as I add new posts.

And do let me know what you think in the comments.