Data Formulator
Data
ai data visualization
SHOW HN2024
How HN took it
3 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 9 critical, out of 17 comments about the project. Thread score -0.22.
Performance: 0 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 againstIdea: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful for saving time on data tasks
From 2 comments
Definitely looks like something that could save me, and others, allot of time. Thanks for sharing!
marktl on HNThanks for sharing and provide open source version! This is great!
donq1xote1 on HN
Data threads and UI-plus-natural-language approach are interesting
From 2 comments
Some of the metaphors for interacting with the models, and visualizing as threads are interesting. Definitely does a good combination of ease of prompting + interogatability of…
d_watt on HNI just tried this out on a bunch of log files that were lying around. Excellent! I would love to connect this to a SQL database through ODBC/ JDBC and ask questions about the…
gourabmi on HN
Objections
AI output may be wrong; hard to verify transformations
From 3 comments
Since Data Formulator performs data transformation on your behalf to get the desired visualization, how can we verify those transformations are not contaminated by LLM…
goose- on HNThe problem with AI is still, how confident can we be the result isn’t wrong?
croes on HNWe still really should not be confident. We have seen this time and time again that the output cannot be relied on. People keep trying to downplay the problem as "not a big deal"…
nerdjon on HN
Less consistent results than prompting GPT-4o directly
From 1 comment
After giving it a whirl I'm a little underwhelmed, but maybe I'm using it wrong. I'm getting less consistent results than if I prompted GPT4-o for a Vega graph after providing it…
matt3D on HN
Requests
Connect to SQL databases via ODBC/JDBC
From 1 comment
I just tried this out on a bunch of log files that were lying around. Excellent! I would love to connect this to a SQL database through ODBC/ JDBC and ask questions about the…
gourabmi on HN
Jupyter extension
From 1 comment
This looks good, especially the data ingest. A couple of questions: What type of data person are you aiming this tool to be useful for, data analyst, data scientist, or data…
paddy_m on HN
Questions
How to verify transformations and avoid hallucinations
From 2 comments
Since Data Formulator performs data transformation on your behalf to get the desired visualization, how can we verify those transformations are not contaminated by LLM…
goose- on HNThis looks good, especially the data ingest. A couple of questions: What type of data person are you aiming this tool to be useful for, data analyst, data scientist, or data…
paddy_m on HN
Handling missing Python libraries like ARIMA
From 1 comment
Some of the metaphors for interacting with the models, and visualizing as threads are interesting. Definitely does a good combination of ease of prompting + interogatability of…
d_watt on HN
Alternatives named
Buckaroo
From 1 comment
I have a tool [1] that is tackling some of the same problems in a different way. I had some core views that shaped what I built. 1. When doing data manipulation, especially…
paddy_m on HN
Chat-based LLMs such as GPT-4o and Anthropic's tool
From 2 comments
Anthropic recently released something that looks more polished but follows the chat paradigm. [1] As a builder of something like that [2], I believe the future is a mix, where…
zurfer on HNpotentially! I myself as an experienced programmer finds directly chatting with GPT-4o much easier, since I have full control. But Data Formulator only transforms data in the…
chenglong-hn on HN
Hex's Vega-lite DSL approach
From 1 comment
way cool! I hope to take it for a spin tomorrow! Q: Does your team see potential value in a DSL for succinctly describing visualizations to an LLM as Hex did with their DSL for…
data_ders on HN