Adam M Joskowicz

It is quite alarming how the large majority of the public willingly publicize their personal information online because they are are unaware of how the information they put out can be used against them. For example, as business school students, we know that our potential employers can easily look up our social media to have a glimpse of our lifestyle. Robbers are able to obtain information of a family’s whereabouts when they post vacation pictures publicly. They assume that the family’s home is empty an attempt a break in.

Adam,
Thank you for this post. I actually read your post and the article earlier this week but am just now getting around to commenting. I thought the interview with Marquis Montgomery was excellent. His ability to share experiences on the use of Splunk in his workplace was valuable. Since other big data tools were previously used within his company (albeit before his time)… Mr. Montgomery was able to convey why he felt Splunk was the superior tool for his company’s needs. I felt this article was an excellent lead in to our ‘Big Data Analytics Using Splunk’ text. I believe having read this article before diving into our text enhanced my comprehension of topics discussed in chapters 1 & 2. Thanks again!

Thank you for your response, James. I agreed, this article not only helped enhance comprehension of topics discussed in the class text, but also sparked my interest in learning the ins and outs of Splunk, as it backs the notion that this will be a big part of our careers.

Adam: I enjoyed the article and I think it does a great job of showing the other side of the coin to what we were discussing the prior week. Data does empower consumers, as long as they know how to read it. I thought the article revealed how much good can come from data, and how effective and efficient it can make a company. However, I am inclined to believe that the data is only as good as the people interpreting it – which puts companies on an unleveled playing field.

I think back to a major retail company I worked for when I was younger, which launched a nation-wide free ground shipping initiative based on the data they were analyzing that (they thought) said that customers preferred shipping over in-store purchases. What was buried in the data – and undetected until it was too late – was that many of the purchases that required shipping had comped free expedited shipping (due to the high dollar amount), so while it looked like shipped sales were greater in both totals and quantity than in-store, that number was not detected by the company’s analysts. Needless to say when the initiative rolled it, it was a headache as now ALL customers expected free, and in many cases, expedited shipping – regardless of spend – and eventually the policy / offer had to be tweaked to adjust for this (much to the dismay of many customers).