Jennifer A Sargrad

My biggest takeaway from MIS5101 was that everybody wants to use data analytics and visualization to improve business practices and drive shareholder value, but not everybody knows how. Understanding data and implementing business intelligence tools is more challenging than using a “gut reaction” or qualatative assumptions to make decisions.…[Read more]

The most important takeaway from the speakers’ presentation was that data analytics and visualizations should try to simplify information, not complicate it. Often times when we are trying to prove how much work we have done or when we are unable to discern the most important information, we often end up with a far more complex story than our…[Read more]

What is the most likely time of day for someone to arrive at the emergency room complaining about chest pain?
4:00pm

This mashup shows the correlation between high school graduation rate and teen birth rate. Note that those states with the highest ranking (darkest color) are those with either a high percentage of high school graduates, a low teen birth rate, or a combination of the two. The opposite goes for those states with the lowest…[Read more]

You could certainly use data to predict employee success. KPIs such as number of years of work experience, sales records in previous companies, and number of disciplinary actions taken against that person.

In my previous organization (an urban public high school), teachers are evaluated based on their students’ standardized test scores. These can be considered an example of a SMART performance indicator, because they are specific (serve the purpose of measuring a teachers’ effectiveness at teaching a particular competency), measurable (present a…[Read more]

My previous industry was secondary education. In secondary education, an example of a lagging indicator is a school’s historical graduation rate. This is a lagging metric because it shows past success at that particular school, and can be used to predict the future. An example of a leading indicator is a student’s current reading level, which…[Read more]

http://london2012.nytimes.com/results

The New York Times has some of the best infographics I have seen. This particular one shows the number of Olympic medals won by each country over the past 29 Summer Olympic games. I particularly appreciate this graphic because it takes what could be a large, messy infographic (think crowded 3-D bar…[Read more]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/05/us/politics/fiscal-cliff-game.html

Here is one that is NOT good

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/05/17/business/dealbook/how-the-facebook-offering-compares.html

This graphic makes multiple statements and comparisons with very little need for viewer action. It’s easy to see what is unique about the Facebook IPO.

I actually had a problem similar to question one during my summer internship. An organization was converting files from an FTP (file transfer protocol) server to an SFTP server (secure file transfer protocol). In order to do so, the organization had to merge data from two servers, each of which captured slightly different data. One server…[Read more]

Team members:

Shashank Agrahara Nagaraj – tuf28621@temple.edu
Patrick Burgi – tuf27756@temple.edu
Lauren Patterson – tuf02801@temple.edu
Jennifer Sargrad – tuf33273@temple.edu
Gaurav Varma – tuf29514@temple.edu

We will study how a business to consumer marketing organization could identify opportunities by combining two different…[Read more]

My recommendation to ensure an ERD accurately represents a particular event is to make sure it accounts for the dynamic nature of events. When designing a database, if it represents the state of things as they are today, it may not accurately represent the state of things tomorrow. Building in the ability to change the structure based on new…[Read more]