Courtney Minich

I could see decision trees being very helpful in the process of grading a paper. If there are certain topics that are included and certain topics that are not, if an instructor has a decision tree laid out with all of the possible outcomes, it could help them decipher what grade the student should receive on the assignment.

I can also see decision trees being extremely useful in sports organizations. If a team wants to sign a player, there is “How much should we pay him?” or “what alternatives do we already have in the organization?” or “Does signing this player increase the total win shares on the field to make him/her worth the investment?” Such questions could be lined out in decision trees to help a team decide whether or not they want to sign a player to such a contract.

After talking about decision trees in last week’s class, I realized that they can be implemented in basically every aspect of someone’s life. Besides being useful in the business setting, decision trees can be helpful when deciding between several applicants. This could be for an organization, club, team, etc. In any case, a decision tree would help break down which candidates are the most qualify by answering questions like do they meet all the requirements? Do they have valuable experience? Would they be a good fit? In summary, using a decision tree as a visual aid makes the process of deciding between different applicants much easier.

There are almost endless options for using a decision tree to help a project be more efficient. A couple that I though of could be something such as cooking or building. While cooking, you could use a decision tree to map out what ingredients are used and to what quantity you want to produce to feed the desired amount of people.
In building, you can map out the materials to be used and dimensions that are to be followed in order to complete the vision of the blueprint.
This would be helpful as all the possible outcomes would become evident so mistakes are kept to a minimum.

A decision tree can be helpful in in so many ways especially in the home. My husband and I everyday discuss what we want to have for dinner and it’s never an easy decision to make. Do we want to cook at home, order take out or go out to eat at a restaurant? What are we in the mood for? How much money do we want to spend? Do we have everything we need to cook a meal at home or do we need to stop at the store? All of these are taken into consideration when trying to figure what we want to have for dinner. The outcome would be spending less time deciding on what to do for dinner and can come to an agreement.

I often used decision trees while working in real estate because of how easy it made the questioning process with a new client. In order to truly understand what a client may be looking for, what their current situation is, and if there are any issues that could hold them back from purchasing a new home, it is important to ask the right questions. Since there are many possible questions and scenarios that can occur, starting with broad questions and funneling down with each one can help determine the best course of action. For example, I may ask someone, “How soon do you see yourself living in your new home?” This question could indicate a desire to move rather quickly, which will then signal me to continue with the questions. If the response is that the client does not see themselves moving for another few years, this will signal me to stop the questioning process and follow up at a later time.

Recently, as I was trying to build up my schedule for upcoming Summer and Fall semesters, I find that decision trees are really helpful for students in deciding which courses to register for which semester. They are especially helpful in aligning classes which have prerequisites, so I have an idea which ones are of higher priority and needed to be taken first, in order for me to graduate earliest. This is a simple and effective tool which reduces a great amount of time and resources, when used in the appropriate situations.

After learning about business rules and decision trees, I took away that decision trees can be used in any given situation really. Do I really need to buy ANOTHER pair of shoes? Do I have the money to spend? Do I really care what others will think of me if I don’t have the new shoes? etc. I also feel that decision trees are great for deciding if they want to sign a sports player or not. Does he/she meet the requirements? What would they get paid? Do they have a good track record? Will they be a good necessity to the team? This way it is very clear and simple to weed out the players that don’t fit the basics. Decision trees are my new favorite diagram to work with, (I especially liked the bacon example).

I think decision tree is very helpful tool for every aspect in our daily life. Especially for any major decision to be made. Let’s say, decision tree should be very helpful to own a brand new car for a person who’s income is average. Before he buys the car he would have thing that, should he finance the car or pay it full? If he pays the full amount for it, has he left with enough money for the rest of his expenditure for the whole year? if not, should he go for finance the car? if he finance the car, is he able to regularly pay for the the monthly installment amount after paying all of his monthly expenses? or he would think about doing uber/lyft to atleast pay out the monthly installment. Is doing uber/lyft with a new car a good decision?
So,after learning about decision tree, I think it’s not only a helpful tool in Information system but also a great method for taking some very important decision in our everyday life.

The decision tree can be useful in planning the perfect vacation trip, whether you are travelling in or out of the states. Deciding on the vacation destination, what airlines to travel with, what hotel or Airbnb to stay at, how much you are willing to spend on the vacation, and many other decisions can easily be guided towards finding an affordable and exciting vacation if the decision tree is used. The decision tree can also be very helpful in deciding what career path to take. Questions like, what am good I at? Is there a career that I am and will be excited to be in for many years? Will this career make me financially stable? Using the decision tree to answer these questions can help one to select the right career path to be in. Although decision trees are helpful in information systems, they equally as helpful in other areas when finding the best answers to questions that have alternative solutions.

My venture capital firm uses decision trees when making final determinations on investing in an early stage company. Its design allowing us to branch off to multiple investment rationals before deciding to invest based on the relative risk is helpful before making the decision to approve the investment and pass it to our investment committee to then reviews the investment and our decision tree before it receives final approval. The decision tree is reviewed by the committee to ensure that all possible considerations were made when making the decision to invest.

I feel that a decision tree can be useful for many for many things in life. Decision trees can be helpful when coordinating daily events such as eating or cleaning. An example would be that my girlfriend and I have a tough time deciding on dinner. Even though you don’t think you are making a decision tree, now that I understand more about one I use it every time we decide on food. We usually take cooking at home versus buying food. We then look at hoe we are feeling whether its cooking, picking up food, getting food delivered, or going out (or going to the bar). When that part of the decision is made, we then look at the options on what and where to eat/cook. You can take variables such as bar food, cheap food, healthy food etc. We are usually able to finally making a decision after going through this process.

In my line of work Supply Chain a decision tree could be very useful for everyday decisions. An example would be how long it would take to get a customer it’s product. There are a lot of things that have to be considered and gone over. This would help them determine if they are able to be a specific lead time they told the customer regarding their product.

I work for a business solutions company and decision trees are extremely helpful when trying to figure out how to aid a client. It helps to write down the business process and overall thought process, so I can search for a better solution. We primarily focus in print management. I could use decision trees to right down the flow to see which device the customer prints too, what the process it and what the mapping is of the floor.

After carefully reviewing both the Swimlanes and the ERDs, although both diagrams are useful methods for analyzing the business process, as a Business Management major, I think the swimlane diagram will be more helpful to use. The swimlane diagram displays a more detailed business process that can easily be interpreted by anyone. While the information on the swimlane diagram can be understandable and beneficial to business analysts and external viewers, the information to be gained from the ERDs is quite complex and hard to understand if the viewer is not an analyst. As a potential manager of a business, using the swimlane diagram can enable me to easily relay understandable information to my potential employees or stakeholders. Using the swimlane diagram also facilitates the allocation and display of much more information as compared to that of the ERDs.

As an MIS major, I believe that both of these diagrams will be important depending on the career path that I take. For example, if I go into project management, I believe that while both of these are extremely important, the process and planning of the project would be more easily laid out and more usefully analyzed via a swimlane diagram because it clearly identifies all of the important steps in the process, where the project should go afterward, and whom to consult at certain checkpoints.. If I choose to go into the business analyst role, I believe that the ERD may be more useful because it would allow me to view multiple different facets of particular traits and connect certain attributes together that may not be possible via a swimlane diagram to increase profit or improve efficiency.

As the Group CEO of Brier & Thorn, an IT risk management firm that also provides managed security services, swimlane charts are an integral cog in our wheelhouse in both managed services and our consulting practice. I’ve used swimlanes to diagram the workflow of a security event. The event starts in the first lane for TIER 1 analysts, then moves throughout the analytic rigor process to a TIER III — the bottom lane where it’s finally escalated to the customer for remediation. Swimlane charts allow for us to clearly decompose the event analysis process and the responsibilities of each functional area at that point in the analysis process.

Q: This week, we reviewed Swimlanes and ERDs as methods of analyzing business processes and using visuals to tell a story. In your current career or major, which tool do you think would be more helpful and why?

A: Working for a major Health insurance company, it would be more helpful to use swimlanes. I have used a swimlane in the past to assist in the development of an information system which made it possible for healthcare providers to receive automatic prior authorizations to perform medical services. The use of swimlanes made it easier to explain to the developers the process flow of the prior authorization process so that this new system could mirror human activity.

As a business management major and working in the healthcare industry, swimlane diagrams are the most helpful method to identify inefficiencies or problem areas within the company or department. A few years ago, I went through an A3 Lean Six Sigma class and became certified. In this class I was able to identify a problem within my department and work through it step-by-step. I knew the actors involved, their responsibility and actions, identify redundancies and how I could eliminate those extra steps to have a streamlined process. Swimlane is similar in the way that it helped me understand the entire the process and successfully develop a solution.

As a Shopify drop-shipper, swimlanes are more helpful because they can easily communicate the step by step process to any individual that may be considered for hire. While most of the business is automated through tools such as Oberlo, there is still a need to recruit freelancers to push products and customize the Shopify page. Many individuals who work in e-commerce are not familiar with drop shipping through AliExpress, but they possess the skills in order to get the job done. Therefore, having a swimlane diagram to easily summarize the step by step process, from searching for products on AliExpress to marketing the product on the Shopify, can be extremely helpful when communicating with and training new hires.

Hello Everyone,

I am an account manager for an o-ring, seals, and gaskets distributor. In my role, I wear many hats to ensure that quotes are delivered, orders are processed, and orders are kept up for ship dates. I believe a Swimlane diagram is a must in my position and for the company because at a time like now, processes are starting to become inefficient. Creating a Swimlane diagram would help managers understand the inefficiencies in the distribution process. This would help make a decision to create new jobs (hire more people) since the company is looking to grow into a larger market.

Hello Everyone!

I am a marketing major, so in my opinion, both ERDs and Swimlane diagrams are both super resourceful. If I had to pick one to focus more on for marketing I would say implement the Swimlane diagram. This particular diagram is very easy to use by anyone, even if they’ve never seen one before. I feel with marketing, it is a great tool to use to insure that anyone who lays eyes on it knows everything that the diagram is representing. It helps whoever is looking at the Swimlane, to make efficient decisions, simply and accurately.

I have not used either one of these in my experiences in my career. I have however used information services and different software with the various roles and fields that I have worked. I believe that swimlane would be more helpful. I see this as being more helpful because even though it may seem like a lot for someone that who have never used them like myself but with my line of work it would help explain the process overall of what I do. I think in working supply chain and logistics it could explain the process start to end.

Since my current work is enrolling employees in their employer-sponsored benefits, I think ERDs would be more helpful because we have to collect a lot of data from the employees such as social security number, date of birth, date of hire, and many other pieces of personal information. We manage the majority of the accounts, so who sends what where and exactly what data do we need in order to complete the process. We also coordinate timelines to ensure the three separate parties (my company, the employer, and the insurance carrier) are on the same page. ERDs would help to be able to see all of this information in one place, layout what each party is responsible for, and how it will all flow.

This is a good point! An interesting way to utilizing swimlanes out of their normal use case.

As a finance major, a sound understanding of MIS can be essential for carrying out the day-to-day financial analysis of a business. Informations systems can be created to streamline this process making it more time efficient. Ultimately, this can give the company you’re working for a competitive advantage over it’s competitors. An understanding of Management Information Systems is critical for me being successful in my professional career because it exists all throughout the business world. MIS is often referred to as the “glue” that ties businesses together. In other words, without a foundation in MIS it’ll be especially hard to succeed in my career path as a finance major because I’ll need to know and be able to apply the basic MIS skills for any job in the business field.

As an MIS major, I see MIS fitting into my career as a “main feature”, in that I will be interacting with the things that I learn in MIS courses and using the skills acquired at Temple throughout the early part of my career every single day. Thus, understanding what is vital to MIS is crucial to my success. Understanding MIS will be crucial because it will allow me to become a better employee by understanding all of the important features of technology within a company and possibly come up with solutions to make them better or more efficient. Since MIS is what connects so many different parts of businesses together, I hope to be that vital connection, and be a good one at that. Whether that job be a project manager, analyst, planner, or even more, I believe that at the core of being great at what I do will have MIS at its roots.

As a legal studies major, I believe that MIS plays a crucial role in helping my future role as a legal assistant or attorney to accurately store and refer to legal information. Finding information and cross-referencing case studies quickly is essential to servicing clients in the legal profession. Moreover, lawyers also need to acquaint themselves with the ethics of using MIS in business and in society at large, such as intellectual property, as well as the privacy and freedom of using the Internet in this information age.

Currently, my major is Marketing. I have been in my current position at Verizon communications for almost 22 years. I am also a partner at a brewery in South Jersey. Going into this MIS class, I was uncertain what to expect. I honestly wasn’t familiar with it. Last weeks class helped me understand that MIS is involved in all aspects of business. I hope that this class will help me gain more knowledge that I can apply to my business and help it grow and be even more successful.

My name is Lance, I am currently an Accounting Major considering a change to Business Management. I currently work in an Enforcement division of a local government agency and anticipate staying here even after obtaining my degree. I believe that MIS will help me use technology to communicate information better to the government which may enable them to improve the public’s standard of living.

Hello All,

My current major is Legal Studies/Real Estate (which I am considering changing to MIS) I currently work in Business Management and after learning more and about MIS, I now understand that it’s necessary to have a background in MIS to help solve problems. I can’t count how many times my company has called in consultants to help identify & resolve problems within. I one day hope to start my own company, and I believe that I could possible dominate the competition if I had the knowledge of an Management Analyst-which a MIS degree could offer. I would be able to increase profitability, identify problems before they get out of control, be able to foresee where to improve BEFORE companies usually see it…..which is normally after the lawsuits & high turn-over rate.

My current career allows me to return to school and many of the things discussed in the course and reading materials is or has been applicable to my professional career to date. I do agree in the significance the course information has in the workplace and the tools, if employed, will help circumvent problems and help present a more professional and polished approach to everyone’s future work environment. I will be pursuing a legal studies degree and hopefully on to law school so the information this course has provided to date is useful I just hope to be doing research for a legal office in the future.

My major is Marketing and I currently work at a benefit communications and enrollment firm. We use systems daily to capture information about employees and use that data to effectively communicate their employer-sponsored benefits to them. Our company is moving quickly with technology, keeping ahead of our competitors. Our IT department continues to grow and spill over into other departments and roles, mine included. A strong understanding of MIS will definitely make me more valuable in my current career and any future career as MIS is everywhere.

Currently, I am a business management major working at a large logistics and supply chain company as the Manager of IT. Management Information System is crucial to my day job as I work with several databases and enterprise systems. Outside of the routine IT tasks, there are also many business analysis roles I fill. One of the key ways to succeed in these roles is understanding data holistically, which I believe MIS allows you to do. From marrying different datasets to establishing KPIs, an understanding of MIS is necessary to properly achieve results.

Hey everyone, I couldn’t get this tab to load correctly. I am currently a marketing major in Fox. MIS can open so many door for marketers enabling managers to share information and work together helping marketers collaborate with customers on product designs and customer requirements, and addressing operational needs through customer management systems. I feel like MIS is vital in multiple fields whether its with making ads for certain companies or in regard to Netflix, for example. (which I found interesting)

Hello Everyone, I am currently a Marketing major here at Temple. I believe that MIS can help me as a future marketer understand the process of a marketing program. It can help connect with customers in terms of understanding their needs to give them the products/services they are looking for. Currently, I am in Inside Sales for a distribution company. I have found that the early units in this class touch on many of the processes I deal with daily. As much as I never thought to think information systems, I can finally go into work understanding that many processes came from information systems.

As a Business Management major, the knowledge and application of MIS in my potential career position can help me break down daily business activities and problems into strategic components and with the help of the appropriate technology, solve those problems in a timely and effective manner. An important part of being successful includes staying knowledgeable and up to date with upcoming modern technologies. This MIS course will help me gather the requisite tools needed to get informed about the updated problem-solving techniques and methods. I also look forward to learning from each class member and also share whatever information I may have that can benefit the class.

When Martha is first talking to Ash via chat you could see the decision tree learning process. It progressively learns how to respond to her basic interactions over chat and then over the phone. The downfall was when Ash the robot came to life and was unable to reproduce the nuances that a real person would have. Robot Ash was based off of real Ash’s social media persona (a lot of unstructured data), which doesn’t capture all of a human life. Robot Ash can’t respond to emotions like a real human being. When Martha gets upset at robot Ash, he asks did Ash do xyz, to figure out what type of response he should do next.

I think machine learning happened with every interaction with Ash. When the account was set up and The initial search for public information was done to set a default personality that started emailing the woman, Each time she corresponded with him via email he learned and adapted, each time they talked on the phone ash Learned and adapted, also all of the physical, verbal and nonverbal interactions between Ashley and the woman was a learning environment which ultimately stopped her from having him jump off the cliff.

The first machine learning is involved is in the feeding of social media input to attempt to create a programmatic voice for him. This would fall under “supervised” learning, as the machine is being fed input under supervision.
The second way I see machine learning being involved is the initial texting and talking phase. This could be using reinforcement learning where the feedback from the user is further used as training data to improve the AI.
In addition, I would expect the avatar creation to also be done via machine learning based on say, Instagram posts, given to the AI as a supervised learning training set.
Finally, the scene at the end, where she tells the AI to react and show fear, and it starts to, is also an example of reinforcement learning, whereby she is providing training data as reinforcement to improve the AI.

Machine learning obviously the backbone of this episode. it’s present on every level and I think two of the biggest pieces of machine learning we see are decision tree learning and deep learning. Decision tree learning is present when Martha is talking to the AI version of Ash through the chat system. The AI uses data from social media to predict and decide how it should respond. Deep learning is present when the AI version of Ash gets created and actually takes physical form. At this point the AI is processing speech, audio and learning to act as if it were a normal human being.

Ash’s program used machine learning just to come into existence. Martha’s friend (?), allowed the program to have access to Ash’s social media to become “program Ash”. From there Martha fed the program videos of ash that it then created a voice with. Throughout every exchange that Martha had with program Ash, the software was learning and evolving to become more like real Ash. It is unclear (at least to me, I might have missed it) how Android Ash determined what the look of real Ash was, but we can assume that this was also learned by the program through pictures and videos. After android Ash came into existence, he continued to learn about the ways in which real ash would behave.

Human simulation via machine learning is seen through out the whole episode of “Black Mirror”. Robot Ash learns how to respond to Martha using Ash’s social media, emails and charts. It mimics Ash’s voice and the way he speaks. This’s an example of supervised learning. Unfortunately, robot Ash doesn’t know how to respond emotionally to Martha’s feelings. When Martha makes robot Ash to show fear, it does so, and that’s an example of reinforcement learning. In general, the whole episode is kind of creepy. The AI is developing so fast and definitely there are lots of advantages of it. But on the other hand, it frightens me how our future will look like with robots and human simulation software.

The whole episode of the black mirror is based on the machine learning. Creating a using technology person who has been dead is just remarkable. The first machine learning process was to create an online profile of Ash’s using all of the information available online about him such social media, recordings, and videos. After that Mar uploads all the videos into the program she had of Ash’s and it evolves into a person who can talk on a phone. After that its taken to next level she orders an actual robotic physical body that looks like Ash and this robotic Ash uses every bit of information installed in the program to create a personality that is similar to how Ash was in his actual lifetime. Even though it wasn’t a perfect reflection of Ash, it was pretty good. It was my first time watching this episode it was very very interesting as to how is our world going to change in the future.

I agree that machine learning is present throughout this whole episode of Black Mirror. We saw “decision tree” while robot Ash was interacting with Martha. All of the information was gathered through social media and pictures or videos, which lead to his responses, but he could not form his own genuine reactions. We saw that he could not when Martha got mad and wanted him to hit her, and when she asked him to jump over the cliff. Throughout the episode I felt that it was a little creepy having a robot of your dead husband, but if available in the future I can understand a person being so heartbroken over the death of a loved one, that they would resort to such a thing.

In this episode of Black Mirror we see the robot, Ash, use machine learning. The robot uses machine learning by constantly adapting the way it responds to Martha; it is learning the way Martha wants it to respond. The robot also uses deep learning to respond the way Ash would of. At first it doesn’t quite mimic the way Ash would, but at the end when Martha and the robot are standing on the cliff, the robot reacts how Ash would; begging and pleading for its life. On a side note, another amazing show about AI’s using machine learning is WestWorld. I highly recommend it.

The concept of machine learning was present throughout the entire episode. The robot “comes to life” through supervised learning, using decision tree methods based on information gathered about the deceased Ash. The robot is able to take on many characteristics of the man, but not all, which is evidenced as the episode moves along. Each interaction with the robot served to “teach” it something about how it should act or respond in various situations. I found the whole thing a bit disturbing, especially when thinking about how this is becoming a reality in our world.

In the episode of black mirrior, we see the recreation of Ash learn more and more about “himself”. It begins as just text and eventually becomes a full on android. The machine learns in many ways throughout the episode. It learns though photos, videos, and chatting with Martha. The machine learns a lot, but this episode shows that it would be hard to perfect, with the machine not choosing the correct action at times. They learn based off of information, and the information does not always show everything, especially for a human.

The sings of machine learning regarding Ash begin when he begins to “message” Martha and very early on in the conversation he says something that brings a massive smile to her face. Her response is, that’s just like something he would say. At this stage the AI only has Ash’s public information to go on. Later on based on videos uploaded by Martha, the AI can actually replicate Ash’s voice and as well as tone. Later Martha explains to the AI that Ash uses a particular term for a “freak out” The AI within seconds analyzes this new information and apply’s it in the right context. The AI uses Martha’s “orders” instantaneously, really to a fault, as Ash’s true personality would not allow him act so complacent. I can only speak for myself, but I thought they did such a great job of making the AI system seam human that I actually found myself feeling sympathetic towards the “character”. This is the first episode of black mirror I have seen, but I am certain it will not be the last

Machine learning was very much present throughout the duration of the episode. The program “Ash” would learn how to mimic the way he would speak by going through any of Ash’s public social media accounts, and then it would learn to vocally speak by taking the sounds of the real Ash’s voice through video’s that were uploaded. The robot-like Ash would learn from experiences as time went on, but still could not form human reactions, further showing that these programs and machines can not replace the real thing.

It is somewhat scary to think artificial intelligence and machine learning could be as advanced as it was in the episode. Creating a response messages and caller is one thing. Activating an artificial life form of a dead loved one is something completely different. “Ash” was able to analyze data that had been posted by Ash in order to recreate similar responses. To make this more realistic personal messages, videos, voice recording, and Martha’s memories were also analyzed. However, every human has unique thoughts and memories that they can’t/don’t share, because of this “Ash” was never really able to be Ash. As smart and programmable as “Ash” was, he wasn’t human, and no amount of machine learning, at least not in this episode, was going to change that.

Machine learning was noted throughout the episode. Ash started by learning through email, and then expanded through watching videos of the real Ash. He was literally mimicking what the real Ash had left recorded. I found this episode sad, as she was looking to replace her fiancee through artificial intelligence. After she taught him what she could, she realized that he was still a sad copy of the original. Machine learning in this aspect, has limits as to how close it could get.

I must say, I will begin to watch Black Mirror. I did not like the concept of this episode, just because I lost my mother at a young age, and I do not know if I could reintroduce her back into my life; I don’t know how that sounds to people, but people learn to cope. Additionally, I believe there is hidden symbolism in the episode. As Americans, we have an everlasting desire for something more, especially technology. We always want the newest iPhone, the newest Snapchat update (not so much right now) and the newest technology (VR) in general. Concepts like this will keep us wanting more, which can be taken too far, like bringing someone back to life in the form of a “human.” All in all, technology and A.I. will continue to develop and change beyond our wildest dreams.

The most interesting innovation to me is streaming. It disrupted the entire way giant cable companies competed and priced their items. Their competitive advantage is slipping Take Netflix and Hulu for example. People are literally canceling their service with cable companies because they pay less for more variety and on demand service. Its similar to pay per view except we are now able to pay for specific content we want. This is making cable companies or big name companies like HBO release similar items like HBo go or networks releasing more of their content on their own website such as AMC and the likes of the CW releasing an App to view their content. The original business model is now in the decline. the strategy has to be reworked. I predict more streaming or even more specific channel or content availability per price now rather then all cable chunked into big groups.

I think that smart devices like my iPhone and Apple Watch have changed the way I Interface with the Internet and how I make purchasing decisions as a consumer. Since the computing power of my phone keeps getting faster and easier for me to pay bills, shop online and plan out events I hardly use my computer at home anymore and that means I’m not really that worried if it’s becoming outdated and there’s no rush for me to upgrade my computer anytime soon.

I feel that Driver-less cars is one of the most important innovations over the last few years. Ride share services like Uber and Lyft has flipped the taxi industry upside-down by employing everyday people to act as drivers, and it would appear as though they are going to change the game again with driver-less cars. If driver-less cars are able to be widely adopted, the taxi industry may no exist at all in the next 10 years. You may not even need to own a car, you could solely rely on driver-less taxis to get you from point A to point B.

I agree with Joshua on the availability to stream. Streaming disrupted the local movie rental stores and put them out of business. Now major cable companies are competing for our business. My parent’s house they still have cable tv, but my apartment it was cheaper to pay for wifi and limited tv vs just wifi. Now I use Hulu or log into Xfinity using my computer. I do enjoy watching live TV so I do not foresee myself cutting the cord anytime soon. As when I am home I do watch live tv. Not only that but recently Disney acquired Fox which will probably impact Hulu. Disney also announced plans to launch their own streaming services. Now it is streaming services competing against one another.

A somewhat recent disruptive innovation could be internet radio. Originally if we wanted to listen to a band or artist, we either needed to buy their individual album or hope to catch them on the radio. Now there is an option of internet radio. With this we can either freely (with ads) or through a monthly fee listen to thousands of artists on demand. While from what I gather this may not have been great for the record companies, it surely helped consumers. I use to purchase at least 2 CD albums per month. That would have been roughly $30. Now For something like $10 a month I have access to thousands of artists and albums. The other benefit is the devices this can be played on. Through smart phones, PCs, and even some car entertainment systems.

The most interesting innovation to me is the prevalence of the internet of things. Having devices like Alexa and Google Homes has created an unprecedented ease of access. An Alexa user can just tell the device to order an item they need and it will show up in two days. These technologies continue to be refined. There were issues with children being able to purchase items without parental consent. Google Homes have somewhat worked on this issue by recognizing the voices of specific users. I am looking forward to seeing how these technologies progress.

I think one of the most interesting innovation in the last years is e-book. The advantage is obvious: a portable e-reader can hold an entire library, which can be accessed anywhere. It’s very convenient for students, who have their electronic textbooks on smart devices. Although, there are definitely some disadvantages. One is them is copyright. No matter how much money and work publishing houses put in making a new e-book, there are still some people who download them for free on some torrent site.

I feel that AI is the most important technology in terms of disruptive innovation. Artificial intelligence is becoming so popular that most of us don’t go a day without seeing or using it. Most people I know own some type of home assistant like the Amazon Echo and artificial intelligence is going to continue to grow and expand even further than just a small device in our homes. I think it will continue to be used in manufacturing and change the way companies produce their products. Because of this rapid growth over the past few years I think it is safe to say that AI is the most important technology and I’m excited to see how things continue to develop in this area.

I think artificial intelligence is one of the biggest innovations we have had recently. I think this field is advancing so fast that safety and regulations on them are lagging behind. Alexa and other voice recognizing devices are becoming increasingly popular. It also seems to be moving us closer to a “big brother” scenario. Yikes! I love the benefits of integrating technology into our daily lives but I can’t help but wonder if we are being too casual with it. Alexa and the likes are changing the face of how we order things, play music, take notes… Live radio is fading out and many businesses are going digital.

I also agree that the ability to stream. It really shut down places that rent media. Tv shows, music, video games are much easier to get now, from the comfort of your own home. This innovation really disrupted rental stores, which are mostly out of business now. Streaming changed the business model by allowing customers to buy media from their own home instead of having to drive somewhere. Many companies are trying to follow suit with Netflix by making their own streaming service, which shows how lucrative it really is. There are so many streaming services but many people will not pay for more than one of them, which causes competition in acquiring media to stream.

I am constantly amazed by the way we interact with the internet evolves and advances. One of the most interesting things I’ve experienced over the past few years is my Apple Watch. I can take calls, get text messages, find information on the internet, track calories, determine my sleep quality…all from a device on my wrist. I can even leave my wallet and cash at home and pay with my watch. It’s amazing how far we’ve come, and yet still somewhat disconcerting!

I’d have to agree with some of my classmates who mentioned streaming tv services, but for me it would be an actual streaming device like my Amazon Firestick. To me it’s like having my cable box in my pocket. I do have Verizon Fios, but I have all my favorite channel apps as well as Netflix and Amazon Prime downloaded onto the stick. So, if I am away on business or vacation I can just throw it in my bag and stream my shows or watch sports if the place where I’m staying doesn’t have certain channels.

Ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft have been the most amazing innovation in the last decade or so because their business models disrupted the old taxi business model. They offer a simplified and direct access to transportation without the hailing and yelling for a taxi cab or the hassle of looking one up on google or in the yellow pages. The old business model was established on, in most cases large capital investments of fleets and expenditures like insurance, interest, parking e.t.c. Uber and the like cost very little to startup and incur very little in expenses.

I think an interesting and disruptive technological advance is amazon go. This new style grocery store incorporates an RFID similar device and enhanced photo recognition on its products to charge you exactly what you put in your basket. It’s disruptive because it eliminates registers for check out, and also presents a new business model for existing grocery stores to compete with.

The technological advances withhin the last 20 years or so have, and continue to revolutionize the way we do every day things. Take this class for example. New technology and programs allow us to meet and learn right from the comfort of our homes. Additionally, we did not have to purchase a hard text for this class, simply because there is an aray of subjects, and then some, readily avaliable to us in a matter of seconds. The beautiful thing about the internet and technology is that it is ever changing. There is always something new to learn, news to read, products to buy, and we can do it all at our fingertips.

An important innovation has been the use of the smart phone. As the iPhone was released in 2007, Smartphones have now become the norm. We use our smartphones to check our bank accounts, order food and clothing, and occasionally check ourselves out at stores. The pre Smartphone era, relied more of human interaction. We needed cashiers to ring up our purchases, help us choose items, and verify our identity before giving us secured information. Now we only need to use our fingerprint, or hold up our phone. The advances we have made are great, but at the same time, they are costing people jobs.

To me, the most interesting innovation is automated systems and transferring data from hard copies to digital copies. This is not the most recent development but it is interesting to me because I have seen its impact at my internship. A lot of data feel through the cracks when they switched systems that they are only discovering now. In addition, they still do a lot of tasks manually even though they have the programs to automate, because they either don’t know how to make the switch or don’t have the time in the middle of whatever they are doing (i.e., it is easy to quickly do it rather than spend a long time setting up a system for later). This past year I have worked with the Advancement Director to make a lot of changes and automate more and more tasks, and it has been very interesting to see it pay off!

I think Home Automation products, such as the Alexa have been great innovations. They allow you to be in separate rooms and hear music or you can quickly access information that you otherwise would need to go on the computer or read the paper to find out. It’s a great way to control your house lighting, as well. If your away, you can have control over the house to make people think someone is still home, which is less likely to have break ins happen. These products are really causing a change in the way people act and behave.

The most interesting innovation in the past few years was the cloud. It allowed us to access a plethora of data from anywhere in the world at anytime while not having to worry as much about storage space on physical devices on site. The business has evolved over time from punching out codes in paper, to floppy disks, hard drives and now onto the cloud, really changing what the major players in this space are capable of doing. It essentially catapulted Amazon into the business it is today.

Working in Accounting, ERPs are very helpful and important. Having a system with the ability to triple check inventory/receiving saves accounting personnel time and saves the company money. For an accountant, having bad data can be disastrous and potentially result in legal issues.

I work for a company that manufactures and ship office furniture all over the country and an ERP system be extremely helpful to my every day job (they are actually in the process of implementing one with Oracle). When working in an industry that requires manufacturing of a product, in my case most of the time it is custom product, bad data could cause chaos for any project. If the specs for a certain product is inputting into manufacturing system incorrectly, the product could be manufactured incorrectly causing the client to receive the wrong product. If this is done enough times you will lose business and gain a bad reputation.

I work in the medical field and I think that without the ERP systems in place nothing would really function efficiently and effectively enough to see the patient counts that we do. Our systems at my job handles everything from payroll through patient data. If the wrong data is gathered on a patient it could be fatal or without data analytics research and development for cures wouldn’t be timely or possible.

Good data is crucial in any environment. Especially, multi-part systems that have been patched together over time. The main system feeds the downstream systems and occasionally information flows backwards. The big decision is whether or not you want downstream systems to be able to overwrite the ERP system. Throughout my career I have seen bad data skew and ultimately invalidate performance metrics as a result. Data is absolutely crucial, but is meaningless without good data that is verifiable.

ERP’s are all around us, however dealing with personal information is challenging enough with all of the security risks that that companies, schools, and healthcare providers Information System/Technology departments endure, but to have to deal with corrupt data too would be horrific. If a student were unable to receive their financial awards, or if a patient were to have an incorrect note in their chart, would be severe. As an example, I have seen duplicate charts for patients and important items cannot be located because of that duplicate chart. This is important to correct for litigation purposes alone, or a student has to sit out because their awards were not reflected in their account.

Having good data is important in any business. Anytime databases do not communicate to each other would be an absolute nightmare. My last job used an ERP for their online enterprise selling, it’d send us orders based off our inventory and inventory that was not in the warehouse. I have been able to look up an order number that we though was lost, but actually was not because all the departments can communicate with each other. I’ve also been able to cancel an order after saying it was fulfilled due to stains, etc. I have also worked for a company that did not have good data and we’d get orders of many items and then we’d need to cancel it after it was processed, but the system was unable to do that on our end.

Analyzing from the viewpoint of someone working in the medical billing field, ERP systems are extremely helpful in our billing department. Allowing staff to enter data can create errors and a lag time with the data entry process. If the physicians enter their codes from the EMR system, it will be more accurate and can be seen in real time. Anyone with the proper permissions will be able to access that information quickly and know that it is current.

In the practice of law, this concept may have to be implemented in a different manner. Good data/bad data could make or break a case. Presenting evidence in a simple yet formal way for say, a jury, could end with the verdict landing in your favor; it is vital to the success of an objective to have a clear thought process and strong supporting data to accompany it. Erros in data/evidence could just as well alter the verdict or thinking of the jury.

I am an accounting major, and it’s crucial to have good data in place, where everything can be checked and rechecked. Integrated system can save lots of time and money, especially during tax season. It would be an absolute nightmare for the company and its customers to have errors in data, that could lead to a potential lawsuit.

I work in sales for a wire and cable manufacturer and a large part of my job requires me to provide pricing and customized quotes to customers. I rely heavily on data that is input into our system because this is what I use to come up with accurate numbers for quotes. If materials are entered at incorrect prices or shipped/received dates are incorrect my chances of losing a sale go up greatly. I could either price something too low or too high if purchasing data is incorrect and losing a sale over something like incorrect data is a mistake that can easily be avoided.

I work in telecommunications sales and data collection is important especially in regard to forecasting. Three important forecasts that we use are:
1. Economic forecasts, help address business cycles which helps me determine how much credit to extend to companies for the purchases.
2. Technological forecasts, help predict the rate of technological change which is important because technology is a major component in my line of work. It allows us to sell the right technology to the right customer.
3. Demand forecasts, help me determine what we need to order and how much of it we should order. If we do not forecast our demand well enough, we could overstock during low demand or under stock during high demand.
If we collect and rely on bad data, our forecasts will be unreliable and thus get us out of business.

I am majoring in accounting, the examples we were shown give prime examples of how an ERP can impact my job in a meaningful way. It would allow me in my future career to work more efficiently. I would spend less time doing double work and more time focusing on actual problems we face as an organization as an accountant or advisor/analyst. As far as my daily Job is concerned i am transitioning from a collections agency to Meryl Lynch wealth management and data is key in both positions. Basic data such as contact information to reach clients is a key factor and of the highest importance in both positions i mentioned. Bad data can lead us to waste time contacting the wrong person and the bottom line wasting time and money.

I currently work in investments, specializing in transferring assets after a client has passed. In this role, I am dealing with the information of the deceased client, as well as their beneficiaries. There is a lot of information involved in each side of the transfer process. From my employers roll, they use data to project the necessary staffing for the day. From my perspective, I use the date to complete requests for date of death valuations, deciding how much each beneficiary is entitle to, etc. Incorrect information at any point in the process can easily create a ripple effect with negative impacts.

I work as an independent contractor. While I currently work full time now in an office setting, in the future, I hope to transition to completely working online. Technology in this setting is everything. Being able to collect, store, sort, and retrieve both client data and project data efficiently is key to my business functioning at all. If I can’t access the data or receive the wrong data I can’t work. If I can’t work it’s all on me because as an independent contractor, while I do report to people, in many ways I am my own boss and face of my business.

I think having good/reliable data will always be important. I currently work in hotel and having the correct data is important especially when planning/scheduling the following week. If the forecasted numbers are not correct, the labor won’t be correct and the hotel coverage won’t be enough.

Good data will always be better than guess work. In my current position I can use data collected over several years for forecasting what will be needed in the years to come. Without this information I would essentially be guessing what kind of systems or rules we would need in place. The other side would be poorly collected data. With bad data or information we could be looking into the wrong solutions. This could prove very costly if systems or solutions are implemented based on false data and those need to be replaced or reworked to correct.

In my current position as an accounting coordinator, we use an database that connects the entire company, every department. What accounting puts in the system can be seen by eligibility, pension, disability, everyone. Our entire enterprise rests on the ability of the system to allow everyone to have availability to the updates of other departments. If the system were to go down and we were unable to use it (from time to time we can not log on due to maintenance) people don’t know what to do with themselves, this is usually when most of the filing gets done. The only problem is that anyone can update the system, meaning someone with limited knowledge of how their actions will affect others can cause quite a problem. Overall the system is great and I can not see how the company would run without it.

Good data is necessary in running a business well. It allows you to make good predictions on the future and what needs to be done. Bad data could lead a company into doing something that it would later regret. I work in a warehouse and use SAP daily, it allows me to easily look into purchase orders to double check the one I get from the supplier. Without this system it would be a hassle to check something that I do every day, which would make me a less efficient worker. A clear view of correct data is needed for the lowest worker to succeed, which will ultimately allow the company as a whole to grow and succeed.

ERP’s are crucial to running the production heavy business I am in. The ERP we use is Deltek; it allows accounting, project management, and operations to view the same data at any time. The various reports are convenient because they reflect real time, and can be accessed from any device at any time.

I’m majoring in Marketing. I think having good data is very important for a marketer, it makes marketing more efficient. Good data can deliver insight into not just who your customers are, but where they are, what they want, how they want to be contacted and when. Good data can help you discover what influences customer loyalty and what keeps them coming back again and again.With good data, you can determine the optimal marketing spend across multiple channels, as well as continuously optimize marketing programs through testing, measurement, and analysis.

Having good data allows processes to flow more smoothly through an organization. If we are able to better analyze our supply chain to see where are weak points and bottlenecks are, the business will benefit. If we had bad data, we may end up poorly evaluating our supply chain and face losses to our business.

Like the many memes of woman having difficulty choosing something to eat, i believe the business tree can be a priceless asset. As much as this sounds like a joke I am being 100% honest. It would make a complicated decision easier and can go over different situation such as eating in or eating out and if the money is in the budget to currently do so. On a more professional note i think a decision tree would be very essential in deciding to keep your job or start looking for a new one. You can make the mental struggle of such a decision a several step logical decision instead.

A Decision Tree could be useful for deciding many different things. It would be great to plan a day out, like if it’s raining you do this, or if its sunny, you can do that, or one could plan where to spend budgets. When planning for, say, a wedding, it would be useful to plan budgets and decisions. It’s a useful tool that anyone could use for decision planning.

Decision tree would be useful in a clinical setting when trying to determine a patient’s plan of care. Physical therapy versus surgery, medication versus interventional treatments or even helping a patient decide which facility or surgeon to go to base off of Insurance, cost distance and other factors.

In all seriousness, business rules, decision trees and conceptual architecture diagrams would be helpful on both a professional and personal level. I wish all three methods could be used as a clear cut navigation through parenting. Raising child seems to be a thing that is difficult to get complete with accuracy and you face things that are beyond imagination at times without a firm knowledge how to handle the situation. Also, a decision tree would be great to give your child to prevent them from making mistakes, given they listen to your advice and follow the rules. Another way a decision tree would be helpful is possibly through the home buying process. It is a stressful process and often times people are locked into a 30 year mortgage without asking all the proper questions.

I think this question is too open-ended for 3-4 sentences. Any type of decision making process is applicable at all levels. I may be a bit older than the average college student, but does anyone else remember those paper fortune teller toys we used to make in grade school? If not, google paper fortune teller and click on images. It was used to provide fortunes, but ultimately it was a decision tree. It gave a basic set of instructions and you manipulated the toy until you reached a final prediction.

I agree with what Joshua posted about deciding what to eat. I do not like to cook and I find grocery shopping even more of a hassle. I can see using a decision tree to rule out what I do not want to eat depending on my mood, and using that to gauge what food items to shop for.

Joshua’s comment about about deciding what to eat is a great example of using a diagram tree in a casual setting. Another casual example, that I think many people do in their heads already, is deciding what to wear for that day. Are you going to be doing something physical like yard work or something business related like attend a client meeting? There are multiple branches for every occasion and situation. There could even be a rule stating that if an ex (gf/bf/partner) is going to be present at an event that day you must dress a level nicer than you normally do.

Decision trees are used in daily life whether we realize it or not. I have a long commute in the morning so I often have to consider varying factors in which route I take. I first consider the time of day, day of the week, and then events in the city. Each of these narrows and redirects which route is optimal and will get me to work in the best time.

I remember when I was younger I used to enjoy reading the “choose your own adventure” books. Now that I think about it, they were basically decision trees. The books made the reader choose the path that you wanted the character to take. For example, it would ask-Do you want to cross the old bridge? If so, turn to page 8. Do you want to go around the mountain? If so, turn to page 12. So, I think it would be useful in an early elementary classroom where you can allow a special day when children get to choose their learning activities. It could reinforce a child’s decision-making process allowing them to choose the best option and own their choice.

I think decision trees could be used in a variety of different ways outside of information systems. The first thing I thought was simply making a purchase. A perfect example would be a car. You could create a decision tree with all of the features and options you are hoping for and then run different models through the tree. This would help to narrow your decision and allow you to make the best choice.

I think the decision tree would be a great method to plan out school semesters/years. If we get a schedule of all the classes we need to take, we can use decision tree to decide on how to plan and what classes to take each semester. The decision tree would help with the classes that are offered only one semester and also help organizing the day/week between classes, work and family activities.

I absolutely agree with Florecia posted that decision tree is very helpful in raising kids. I have a 1 year old and I think it could be helpful in deciding what kind of activities to use or how to spend a day. In the future it could be used as a guidelines for her to follow our rules, and prevent her from making wrong decisions.

I think the concept of decision trees is used in every day life and intreractions. Every day we are faced with decision making scenarios and I think we approach them with the same effect that we do our business scenarios. For example, whenever a decisicion is to be made we assess all our options. We also consider the stakeholders involved and try to make a decision that pleases as many parties involved or affected by our decisions. Desicion trees are very much a part of our daily lives.

Outside of information systems, I believe that decision trees can still be extremely useful. One example is if someone struggles to control themselves in a certain area (such as what they eat, how often they eat out, how much they spend on shopping, etc.), they can use a decision tree to help them make wise decisions. If they logically map out their decision tree before the situation even occurs, it will be easier to make that choice in the moment. Along the same lines, decision trees might be used to help decide your ethical position on controversial issues. Often such decisions can be highly emotional and hard to make, so a decision tree would help. It might help with making less serious decisions, as well, such as what college you should attend. Clearly it can be used in many areas of life outside of MIS.

One area I could see a decision tree being useful would be for personal purchases. There are many things to consider when buying something, especially higher priced items. Things like “Do I need or want this?” and “can I afford it easily?” or even “will this help improve my life at all?”. I know for myself many times I buy things on impulse, or out of boredom. Using a well configured decision tree could really help break those habits.

The other areas that I could see decision trees being helpful is when you determine what a system will need. When you are putting together a system you can look at it visually and determine what you will actually need and what various options need to be included.

Decision trees could be useful in situations outside of business. One example that I can think of is in making decisions regarding home improvement projects. Questions that could be included might be “purchase” or “DIY,” and “priority” or “can it wait.” In our home there are many things that need to be done and it can be hard to prioritize or know where to start – this could be helpful!

Decision trees are helpful because they encourage you to think of possible outcomes before they happen. This can be helpful in terms of disaster relief plans for municipalities as well as small businesses. They are helpful in that they help set the framework or basic plans regarding a possible situation, by encouraging discussion. This general plan will allow the outcome to run smoother than if the possible situation had never been discussed.

Decision trees can be useful in many situations other than MIS. A decision tree could be used in the workplace to give people a visual on what they should do in given situations. Having an easy to read decision tree is useful because it would allow workers to make the right decisions quickly, without having to find someone for help or just taking a guess on what they should do in a given situation. They could reduce worker errors and increase productivity by reducing the time a worker is trying to figure something out on their own or looking for help.

Great examples in applying decision trees outside of the IT world and in your own industries and personal lives!

When I was a tutor in High School, I actually had to introduce how decision trees work to elementary level students. The decision tree proecss provoked their thinking, and I found that a lot of the students kept going back to the start; they were intrigued to find which decisions led them to certain outcomes. Outside of the classroom, decision trees could help train new employees in a fieild, or outline the decisions an exsisting employee makes.

Decision trees are very helpful in making daily decisions. They provide a highly effective structure within which you can lay out options and investigate the possible outcomes of choosing those options. They also help you to form a balanced picture of the risks and rewards associated with each possible course of action. Decision trees are an excellent way of breaking down a highly complex decision problem into a series of simpler ones.

There are many areas in life that a decision tree would be very helpful in volunteer work with the National Federation for the Blind when it came to planning our events and teaching new members how to act in certain situations. For instance, when new parents who are blind face discrimination from the hospital in regards to handling Child Protective Service concerns.

I think Swimlanes are more helpful in my current major because we can use Swimlanes charts to identify different tasks. The diagrams also help in communicating with other people who may not have much knowledge or not as familiar.

Of the two recent charts we discussed in class, I believe Swimlane’s may be most useful to me. Several projects and tasks I work on require multiple levels of approval and checks before being finalized. Using Swimlanes would certainly help organize the approvals needed for the various tasks. This would also help the process become more efficient as there would be no guess work as to who has the task next. ERDs would seem to actually help for individual projects, but Swimlanes seem like a powerful high level tool.

I think both are very helpful. The Swimlanes would be more helpful for my clients where the ERD’s would be useful for myself as an agent The process of buying a house can be very complicated and overwhelming for both buyers and sellers. It can be especially stressful for first time home buyers. A simple swimlane in this situation would be very helpful as a visualization tool. For organization purposes the ERD would be great to keep track of client, property, lender, and other important information.

Of the two tools we reviewed in class I think that the swim lane diagram would be more useful in my current position. In fact, we have developed diagrams and flow charts that are similar, but might be even more user-friendly and helpful in planning if we turned them into swim lane diagrams. I find it helpful that each “actor” is identified clearly and the process can be followed from one person/department to another. I work in Human Resources, so we have quite a few processes that must be planned and roles that must be identified. This is definitely a tool that will be helpful!

I think in my field of cardiac sonography that a swim lane would be affective for visually distinguishing a plan of care and responsibilities for pathologies of the heart. For example if somebody has aortic stenosis what level of stenosis the patient has dictates the plan of care (observation, medications, surgical interventions. ) So when the patient stenosis progresses or is determined to be severe by going through the steps of the swim lane than they go from seeing a cardiologist to seeing a cardiothoracic surgeon.

The company I currently work for is a manufacturer of fiber optic and custom cable assemblies. I feel that swim lane diagrams would be very useful for the business as there are certainly places we could improve our manufacturing process. Because swim lanes highlight and outline jobs and responsibilities of each actor within a process it would make it easy to see where steps in our manufacturing process are duplicated or more complicated than they need to be. We could then eliminate these duplicates and create a more efficient system.

I think in my current career the swimlanes method would be the best one to use, but it would be best if I had to incorporate another department into the process. It would have to show how another department interacts with the processes of my department so that everyone can be on the same page. I had previously created a workflow process chart for my department but it was more of a top to bottom flow, not a left to right flow because there were only 2 characters-employee and manager.

I think using swimlanes would be best for my job because it is easier to keep track of tasks and duties. This would be easier to breakdown which department does what and how it effects the other departments. This would be mostly useful for the upper management so that they can keep a detailed list of what the departments do and how they are supposed to flow together.

In my day to day I deal with so many things, so many people and many types of technologies, I feel that depending on which day I could use both, nonetheless, Swim lanes would be primary. I could use swim lanes for detailing and streamlining processes to make my job and others easier, especially to bridge the indolence amongst departments. Meaning when a request comes in for us to interact with various departments and specifying responsibilities. I could see myself using ERDs to track our software, hardware and our users though.

For my school career i feel Swimlanes would be more beneficial. It would allow me to map out the processes i need to have in place to be a successful student. It also allows me to map out my courses that i am required to take in order to complete my degree.
As far as my career goes, i can see both being essential. ERD’s can help me in identifying the career path i want to take viewing the characteristics. Swim lanes can help further my insight by showing the job description or responsibilities of the career path. Currently on the hunt for a new job i now have a new ways to chose and think about my choice.

I think swim lane diagrams would be more effective because they can help increase efficiency. I work for a company that relies heavily on efficient production in order to get a deliverable to the client as fast as possible. If we mapped out the workflow using a swim lane diagram, we could easily identify and correct any place an inefficiency was present.

I think that ERD’s would be less important, unless we were trying to figure out more information about who are clients are, and the trends they posses. If we knew that information, I think it could benefit the company by repairing markets that lack revenue, or generating more business by focusing only are markets that have the best return.

I think both Swimlane diagram and ERD’s can be helpful in my career. I could use Swimlanes to illustrate the flow of business operations. Swimlanes can be helpful in representing different kind of information: who perform the activity, what should be done, etc. ERD’s can be very helpful in organizing the information. I could use them in tracking customers and orders.

I think ERDs and swim lanes work for me. Retail has a lot of customer profile tracking taking into account any points accumulated in store and online, purchase history, etc. there I can see ERDs working best. Online order fulfillment I see swim lanes working better.

As a Legal Studies/Pre-Law major, I think a swimlane diagram would be the most helpful when analyzing a situation. When I think about it further, a swimlane diagram could display the relationships between various parties involved in a legal dispute. Analyzing cases visually could help me work through legality issues diligently as an attorney in the future.

At my current job I feel that swim lanes would be more helpful. In fact, I’ve used swim lane diagrams several time over the course of the past year. Every 3 month we have these events called “Kaizen events” where we try and take a manufacturing process and and eliminate waste, making it more efficient. The first step we usually use to determine where waste is in the production process is to create a swim lane diagram. Once the diagram is completed, it is usually fairly easy to pick out any obvious waste that can be eliminated from the process.

In my line of work I think ERDs would be a more helpful tool. Working in retail, my job is to sell to either new or existing customers. ERDs will show the relationship we as a company have with a particular customer and thus can help me as a sales person to offer new or enhance the services that we have. The ERD would present a flow of products and services that I can then leverage to the customer as I am interacting with them.

I work for a technology company and our processes are best mapped out with a swimlane diagram. I often assist our purchasing department. For every order, the project manager must send a request to have an order entered. Once the order is entered with the required information, purchasing sends it to the customer to approve. This process continues and eventually leads to the materials being purchased and installed for the customer. Having this mapped with a swimlane diagram allows for tasks to be designated for who does what and everyone can understand their responsibilities.

A swim lane diagram is also useful in helping clarify responsibilities and help departments work together in a world where departments often don’t understand what the other departments do

I am currently in banking and find swim lane diagrams useful to help clarify responsibilities and appropriate referrals to work with other departments. Entry level positions such as bank tellers see majority of the customer throughout the day. At times it is difficult to know or understand what our partners in different departments are capable of handling. Therefore, a swim lane diagram can be used to direct specific questions to the right professional within the organization.

I work in a warehouse at the moment, so I believe that swimlanes are more useful. There are multiple departments, so the swimlanes would be the diagram to use for almost every situation. It shows a lot of information and is very easy to read. A swimlane could be used to show the movement of a product off of a truck and to the customer, and a simpler function like what to do with a damaged product coming off the truck. Every warehouse situation can be made into a swimlane for an easy to read diagram.

As an accounting major, I believe swim lanes will prove to be more useful to me in my career. I currently work as an accounting coordinator in a small accounting department of Four full employees including the Accounting manager, and one of our goals for 2018 is to electronically update our procedures. (we have a few dozen and most if not all are very outdated) I believe a swim lane diagram would prove very useful in situations with multiple contingencies and that involve multiple departments, which is something rather difficult to explain to a new employee in paragraph or even bullet point form. I sincerely look forward to implementing swim lane diagrams in my current and future positions.

In my current career, as a guest services manager in hotel industry, i think Swimlanes diagram would be very useful. It will be harder to communicate through the ERD method. Swimlanes diagram includes more information and it is easily readable by anyone.

I am currently working on the fundraising team at my internship, and I actually think that both could be helpful in different ways. ERDs would be a great way to organize major donors with their donor ID, contact information, and some statistics about their giving history. Then we could connect them to their solicitor and present the solicitor’s information, ID, and statistics. I also believe that swimlanes would be helpful given where our organization is currently. This past summer we updated many of our systems, which involved many transitions. At the same time, some key employees left and new people came in who needed to be trained in our business processes. Because key employees left at the same time that we switched systems, we are still finding inefficiencies and tasks that were not completed correctly or at all. Swimlane diagrams would be a user-friendly way to train new employees and to ensure that we are eliminating inefficiencies and completing every task.

For my area of work, swimlane diagrams are the most effective. It can be a high overview that allows non-tech people to visualize processes. This also allows us to see inefficiencies in work flow. Despite our best efforts to automate, there is a ton of manual user intervention involved. ERDs would be more useful, but that would generally be at the engineering level for the databases.

I think in my major of supply chain management that swimlanes would be more useful in analyzing the logistical process of an actual supply chain.

This question poses a different meaning for me. I am in my 30s and already have a career in information technologies. Information systems have become the backbone of the world. What used to be card catalogs and filing cabinets have become robust databases that can query millions of records in seconds. Analytics is a also a large part of these systems and user data mining is what allows Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter to provider content rich user experiences at no monetary cost to the user.

Recognizing the usefulness of information systems is what lead me on my career path. I am currently s manager of information systems of Radiology for Temple University Health system. The usefulness is limitless and the benefit in incalculable.

Im a HR major and also a full time employee at a large investment firm, As our records are on computers, we have to safeguard our clients date and investments, as well as our employee records and information. After graduation, I will move out of the investment professional role and more into the HR side. I am hoping this class will help me be more instrumental in suggesting new ways to secure our employee information in regards to smart retention practices.

I’m a Partner in a 1st Party / 3rd Party collections company. MIS is a critical element of my current career. Examples of how I use MIS include: pricing work, analytics to identify opportunities and hazards within work, performance reporting, and client reporting. I see this class as an exciting opportunity to better my understanding of how to use MIS as a tool — I’m also excited about opportunity to learn new technologies.

I am an accounting major. Management Information Systems are essential in the carrier of an accountant. MIS are highly used for accounting operations and financial reports, plus it enables to store a large amount of data. I hope this class will give me an opportunity to better understand the use of MIS and will give me a chance to achieve a high level of efficiency in company’s operations.

I am currently an HR major and I work for Abington Hospital in the area of reception and medical records. We have an online system for filing patient medical records and with HIPAA being an integral part of patient care it is crucial that proper management of these systems is in place. Even emails containing certain information are expected to be encrypted. After completion of my degree I plan on remaining in the hospital setting so this course will serve as a better understanding of the forces at work behind these systems and hopefully a better understanding of ways they can be improved or better implented. MIS is a tool that serves all areas of business especially with the growing technological world and I am eager to learn about such an evolving field.

Since technology literally changes on a daily bases, getting a head start or leg up on some is always helpful. I have been out of school for awhile and I would like to finish up my BA and go on for my MBA. I am currently an Exelon employee and would like to further my career opportunities. We are constantly brainstorming on how to save on man power and other resources, so having a better understanding of MIS could definitely benefit in these discussions.

Currently, I work full time for a major University in the City of Philadelphia, and I am pursuing a Business Administration Degree at the Fox School of Business. I think success has different meanings for different people, however, my aim and or propose is to fully understand how human capital software packages and patient management software packages influence our culture. The security of this information has taken precedence around the globe, and has developed into an intricate portion of MIS. The understanding of the marriage between software and hardware remains vital to my success as well. Management Information systems can enable my success by exposing me to what is required to attain the position of Director of an MIS department.

As a Legal Studies major on the road to law school, I find the comprehension of MIS crucial to my success as a future corporate lawyer. In a buisness atmosphere, my collegaues and I will be exposed to the various forms of feedback computed by MIS. With this information, the company as a whole will have the ability to strategically critique the sources that play into the report – creating a more productive work place. The overall system operation will allow me to access and extract imformation that is valuable to my niche at the company, making me an efficient asset to the company.

At the moment, I work as a retail consultant for AT&T. My goal is to move up within the company or any other telecommunication or media & entertainment company. MIS as i understand is the gathering, processing and storing of data/information. In my field, this information can be used to enhance operations and sales and thus increasing productivity. I see MIS becoming more prevalent in the work place and attractive to employers because it gives us a better undersatanding as to how and why things are happening in business.

Currently, I work full time as a NC Real Estate Agent. It is through this job that I discovered my love for marketing. I am pursuing the OBBA with a specialization in marketing. Especially in this day in age I think it is incredibly important to understand how to beneficially leverage information technology. As a young real estate professional the technology gap between the generations in my field is bluntly apparent. The people who are leading the industry are those who use technology to their advantage. As an independent contractor it is up to myself to learn these systems in order to advance my business.

As a Marketing student, I think MIS plays a very important role in Marketing department. MIS provides important tools for Marketing managers to market their products in the digital world. Now days almost everything is run by technology, it is very important to understand how the technology works and how to use it to our advantage. The people who have an understanding of MIS are more likely to succeed in their professional lives.

I work in Human Resources and am finding that every day our need for and reliance on technological systems and processes increases. It’s interesting to hear from some of my colleagues that have been with my company for 30+ years that “this is not how we have done things.” It is evident that how things were done no longer works in today’s higher paced and constantly changing environment. In HR specifically we focus on the systems and technology that allow us to reach the right job seekers. We also utilize information systems to track performance, plan for staffing needs, and maintain personnel files, among many other things.

I am currently an online BBA student and a full-time employee in the healthcare field. I see MIS currently fitting into my career because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has certain policies in place regarding a patient’s protected health information, electronic health records and rights to privacy, and they expect healthcare providers to be in compliance with these policies in an ever-changing “cyberworld”. So, as a short-term goal, I hope to gain a better understanding of the background and the idea of MIS in order to help me bring new concepts and information to my team. As a long-term goal, I hope it helps in my next step towards a Health Information Management or Healthcare Administration degree after the BBA program.

So far I think an understanding of MIS will help me in my career by understanding how to make and utilize a digital identity that will attract future employers. I also think that this digital identity will help me network and advance my access to business professionals. In the future I feel that understanding digital identities will help me while I’m selecting candidates for a position and conducting interviews as a hiring manager.

I am currently in supply chain and I see MIS fitting into my everyday life. Everything is so wrapped up in technology these days. I currently work in retail, and brick and mortar business are trying their hardest to stay afloat. These days everyone shops online, so the companies I’ve worked for are competing with technology. The current company is piloting a program to not use registers anymore, and just yesterday we had all 10 devices go down, and a register go down. Understanding the processes behind information systems is helpful, so when I am stuck with a line of 10+ people and no technology that works, I can try and understand corporate’s reasoning from straying away from technology that works most of the time vs almost none of the time.

I am majoring in Accounting and work in Accounts Receivable for a technology company in New Jersey. Management information systems have become a part of my everyday life. Gaining a deeper understanding of these systems will allow me to improve on existing processes and identify other areas where they might be utilized.

I am currently an Strategic Lead Account Manger at an office furniture company called Knoll. We manage projects all over the globe and we do so by using a business system that was created to be Y2K complaint. It both looks and preforms like something that was created back in 1999. MIS is currently playing a very large part in my current career. About 5 years ago they started creating a system call “One Knoll” which is a completely new business system that will transform the way that we manage our accounts. . We are at the tail end of the design phase and they are planning go live within the next year. Understanding MIS will help me in my career because it will help me understand the process that was used to create this system and what I can do to help potentially upgrade it.

I am currently a full time online BBA student and a full time employee in retail banking. At the branch level, Management Information Systems are a vital piece that helps employees and executive understand business trends, increase profits, and sustain reports for both the customers and employees. Successful MIS databases will provide information such as, potential sale opportunities to offer clients, recognize an sudden influx on account balances, automatic payments or balances going negative resulting in fees. Furthermore, MIS secures confidential information that must remain secure to protect customer information. In my current career path, having a firm understanding of MIS will assist me in innovating potential updates and suggest new systems that will evolve the workplace environment and promote a positive customer experience.

I am currently an online BBA student and a full time hospitality employee. I have been working in this field for over 7 years and I do feel very confident about my operational skills. However, my goal is to advance in this career onto administrative positions. MIS will be a great help on identifying, analyzing and detailing a resolution for any customer or employee related problem.

MIS is the new way business is done. Regardless of major or career field it is now essential to have an understanding of what it is. Going for accounting MIS are always changing to make the data received more useful to companies. It is sued on a daily basis in the accounting field.
An understanding of MIS will give me an advantage over my peers who did not study it in the workplace. I will have a foundation and understanding of the types of systems and have some familiarity to make a transition into a new position easier. It will allow me to comprehend data given by these systems easier making me more efficient.

I am a part time online BBA student while working full time. With what we talked about last week I believe this class will be one of the most important ones I take in the path for my degree. Information systems are one of the most important things in any business and since I plan to be a manager, I would want to use what it best to get the job done. Understanding MIS will prove itself most helpful for my career goals in doing my job the best I can. Since most businesses use MIS, understanding it will be one of the key things in correctly managing at a company. Being able to analyse systems and use them to their limit is invaluable.

I am a traditional college student coming straight out of high school and am currently an intern at a small non profit women’s health center in West Philadelphia. I work on the fundraising team and have been teaching myself how to glean information from our database that will help us to focus our fundraising efforts better. I believe that gaining an understanding an MIS will begin to help me right away to logically process the data that I am given and perhaps understand what systems are helpful in deciphering the data. I hope to continue working in non profit organizations and look forward to implementing the knowledge I will gain in this class in whatever career I find myself in.

I currently work with databases in SAP everyday. Right away it appears that this class will better help me manage the data that I work with. Looking ahead in class the idea of being better organized should help me succeed in my current career as a data analyst. I have tools available to me such as Microsoft Visio that I hope to be better able to utilize with knowledge gained from this MIS course.

Machine learning was present in the phone calls that Martha made with the artificial intelligence. The AI not only mimicked her deceased lover’s voice, but also picked up the way the lover talked. In addition, there was also that scene where Martha was touching the cheeks of the AI who met her in person. The AI used texture mapping to mimic the feel of regular skin.

I think it was learning how the guy talks and how he chatted online. The conversations they started having seemed kind of real. It also showed this learning during the phone call where it learned more of his patterns. I feel like AI are getting pretty close to being able to virtually mimic a real person based on how well they’re programmed.

The Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” is fascinating. In terms of machine learning I never understand why television and movies treat artificial intelligence as the most naïve beings. Anyone who has been around children knows that you have to TEACH a child how to be nice. Being mean is inherent. All of the texts, emails, and pictures of Ash would have reflected being mean in someway. Ash, once newly reincarnated, hints that he looks so good since we typically “only take good pictures”. While this is mostly true, we don’t just save the best texts and emails in a relationship. His actual personality should show through more, without Martha teaching him.

End rant of that oversight. I think machine learning to this extent is horrifying. Martha is clearly going through numerous psychological issues because Ash looks like Ash but doesn’t have all of the attributes. Technology like this just makes me think of the recluse society that we are moving closer to everyday.

There was a lot of machine learning present in this episode of Black Mirror. The biggest showing of machine learning is the program that the widow used to talk to her deceased husband. This program used social media in order to learn about him and mimic his personality. The program was also able to learn his voice using social media and other videos in order to sound like him. Towards the end of the episode the program created a clone of the deceased husband that acted very similarly to him but still had human learning to do.

Never seeing this show before I was hesitant to watch an episode in a second season and be very lost. I think it is interesting how each episode essentially tells a new story. In this episode a women named Martha loses her boyfriend Ash. In an attempt to reconnect with him she takes advantage of a service that allows artificial intelligence to mimic someone and help cope with their loss. This is the main instance in which machine learning in present. The program goes through all of Ash’s digital records such as social media, AIM, videos, messages, pictures etc. It also uses machine learning and AI when they create the “real life” version of ash which the program is uploaded to. All in all I thought this was an interesting concept and definitely would consider watching from the first season.

I also agree that the program is learning as the interactions take place, which I thought was a cool concept!

Machine Learning is a field of computer science that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. In this episode of black mirror this program is used when the widow talks to Ash , but it really is not him. Since the machine learns everything about Ash through his social media, it is not truly an accurate which in turn messes with the widows mind. I think that even though the program was close to acting like a human, this wouldn’t be a good idea in the real world. Programs like this would not let people properly grieve over their lost ones, so all in all I believe it’s a bad idea.

Karen, you hit the nail on the head. It’s the littlest things that humans notice which machines cannot-moles, subtle laughs and facial expressions that are unique to us as individuals.

Thank you for watching this and for relating your story back to the show.

My husband really likes Black Mirror and tried to get met to watch it with him but the show kind of creeps me out to be honest. The show does generate interest conversation though because it is so bizarre but also, especially with this episode and the advancements of AI seem to be a version of reality that could come to pass. There are many instances where the AI version of Ash exhibits machine learning. AI Ash is programmed to have similarities with the deceased Ash but the AI must learn as it goes without the programming and learn from his social media accounts, email, etc. He also learns from his new personal encounters such as how to have sex and through telephone conversation.

Machine learning was first present through the online service that Martha was using to message “Ash” after he died. The service used Ash’s past online activity and social networks to gather information about him and how he would respond to conversations and experiences. Later on in the episode the online service is able to replicate Ash’s voice after Martha uploads videos and recordings of him. When Martha receives the artificial body that resembles Ash’s physical appearance she soon realizes that this “Ash” is only able to replicate certain aspects of the real Ash. The AI Ash then learns those certain attitudes and characteristics that Martha mentions the real Ash possessed and the AI then tries to recreate them.

The episode shows artificial intelligence throughout it. It shows how computers are constantly evolving to what we do as humans. The scene where the woman is checking her email and moving her hand to the side it shows the computer is following her hand movement to delete the email. This is similar to how the new iPhone follows eye movement. Later in the episode the way the computer can generate a human being who is dead is in my opinion something not out of this world. We already have robots, and the way the show depicts the artificial person talking by using posts from online and videos to make the person sound the way the did while alive is all signs of how computers can machine learn. The robot who plays asham appears to always be learning when he is talking and watching his girlfriend. Nothing will ever be the same as a real human, especially his emotions, which seem to be even more distant than when he was alive.

The presence of machine learning in this episode of Black Mirror is pretty intense to comprehend. When Martha is chatting with the AI of Ash it uses all of the unstructured data he previously put out into the world on social media and even further she had the option to upload personal data in order to make him even more realistic. I feel that that aspect could be possible in our lifetime but to have a physical body with texture mapping is pretty unrealistic albeit incredible to think about!

There is a lot of artificial intelligence shown throughout. Martha was able to talk to her dead husband and he was able to reply. She was even able to have a phone call with him. Martha was able to maintain a relationship with Ash long after he was dead. The AI was able to learn a lot about Ash because he spent a lot of time on social media. The AI was able to mimic him. I felt bad for Martha because she was not able to mourn her husbands death.

Machine learning is present throughout the episode. After Martha’s boyfriend died, she was able to communicate with an AI that was able to mimic him. However, it doesn’t show emotion as humans would, and simply obeys her.

Artificial intelligence is surrounding our world fast and in controversial matters on many tv episodes. In season 2 episode 1 of the popular show Black Mirror (based from Netflix) we enter a different style of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence was able to learn from Martha’s husband and learned how to reenact Ash (husband) through his previous online connectivity like social media. The artificial intelligence in this episode was so advance that Martha could add more data and allow her AI husband be more accurate to the real thing as we all know in the real world AI takes years to actually make changes and replicate life better.

Machine learning is present in three different parts in this episode. The first was when the system used Ash’s old texts and emails to send Martha messages that were typed in the style that Ash used to send messages. The second was when the system used recorded calls to mimic both Ash’s voice and the words he would normally use. The third way was when the robot used videos of Ash to learn how Ash used to act and carry himself.

Firstly, Ai was used to understand communication and form responses. Then that Ai was able to adapt its speech to mimic how Ash had talked. Later on, when the Ai becomes an android(Cybrog?) He is able to adapt his body to conform to what Martha wanted. He learned physical motor skills. Imagine creating a robot capable of balancing a tray of food while running around tables. Not excessively difficult for a human, but insane for a robot. Developing instinctual movements is a great sign of advancment. Sadly, Ash 2.0 is not capable of emotions and had to be qued to fake certain emotions.

It is very unnerving to think what a machine can learn about a human being and be as good at impersonating one….It will be a strange world when one won’t be able to distinguish IA from a human being. This topic was explored by many, starting from Star Trek, works of Isaac Asimov, scientific theories and many TV shows and movies.

The episode used AI when Martha’s boyfriend died. The AI was able to learn how he spoke and what speech patterns he used. I found it a little creepy during the phone call with the AI but that shows what technology could potentially do.

Machine learning is present in this episode from the very beginning. The way the service learns from Ash’s old text messages is the biggest example. Taking in information to piece together a personality and speech pattern isn’t something that’s necessarily out of our grasp in the present. I think the powerful climax of the episode is an interesting example as well. (When Ash 2.0 quickly changes its mind about sacrificing itself as Martha states Ash 1.0 wouldn’t have obeyed the request is a big example of super quick machine learning).

That being said I’m super glad that this episode DIDN’T go where I was expecting it to go. I’ve only seen two episodes before this, and both were horror episodes. I’m so exhausted with malicious AI stories (Terminator came out in 1984 people, its time to let go). AI is one of my big interests in my major and I’ve been involved in writing a few and none have tried to kill me (yet). 🙂

The episode was interesting but scary at the same time. It allowed Martha to have some kind of support when she missed Ash and needed him by her side while pregnant. AI was great in mimicking all the gestures and speech based on Ash’s tweets and posts. However, I was surprised that she kept the “thing” and didn’t get rid of it. Probably, she still wanted a fatherly figure for her kid. It was awesome how AI added the birthmark only by Martha touching the skin