Andrew Oakes

The biggest learning opportunities for me were the in class exercises. For example, while a lecture on SQL and databases is key to understanding their framework, being able to sit down and play with finding things in a database shows you the business value. The same can be said for the pivot table and ERD exercises, I would definitely want these…[Read more]

The most important takeaway in my opinion was that the power of visualizations really lies in how your audience takes and interprets them. Careful consideration should be made not only in how the audience will be able to understand the visualization but also what implications it will have. This includes whatever biases the viewer brings to the…[Read more]

Q: What is the most expensive month on average to go to the emergency room?

A: August 2010 = $1,978.49

This may be outlandish, but if I were in charge of data.gov I would hold an open competition to have individuals run the data and find inefficiencies with the government. It seems like something that would probably resonate with a lot of people, and the reward (while also monetary) is to help the government operate better. This in my mind would…[Read more]

I think data can be used from a persons profile to determine potential job performance. Often times people look for experience at a specific company or industry to understand the applicants skills. For example some employers look for experience at a top consulting firm to indicate a persons ability to approach and diagnose a problem. If an…[Read more]

In my previous organization, my company was performing independent verification and validation testing. One KPI that was used was how many defects were withdrawn. Since we measure the defect statuses ourselves it was easy to track within the organization. Additionally it makes a great proxy for determining how efficient we are at testing. A…[Read more]

https://www.7dayshop.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/The-Evolution-of-iOS-1-to-8_1140px.png
Infographics are interesting because they have recently grown into very long scrolls of information which start to finish can be difficult to thread all of the information together. In fact, often times they are composed of multiple distinct stories…[Read more]

http://s.hswstatic.com/gif/prison-10.jpg

http://www.coolinfographics.com/storage/post-images/PJ-BS591_MIDSEA_G_20140108164208.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1390159451168

In some work that I did this past summer working on an electronic health record system, there were so many different tables of information that needed to constantly be joined. In fact often times these tables were stored in different databases and would be packaged to share with other practitioners looking to retrieve them. These tables could…[Read more]

To make sure an ERD represents the business event it is supposed to capture I think it is important to thoroughly understand all of the entities at play. Information solicitation techniques such as stakeholder interviews, observing the business event, or employee workshops would be a great way to make a MECE list of entities in the business…[Read more]