Jeta Gjana

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/obama-calls-curb-standardized-testing-schools-n451741
This article is about President Obama making a curve on standardized tests in school. This was important to me because based on their data students take 112.3 test from PreK to grade 12. The test scores can show that to much test taking and not enough information given can lower test scores. Most data that is given shows that the students tests scores are low because of the stress put on the teachers and the students and the fun being taken out of learning.

http://www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/news/2015/11/02/university-of-pennsylvania-president-gets-big.html

This article is about the huge spike in salary for the president of University of Pennsylvania. She saw her pay rise nearly 21% in the fiscal year of 2014. She has been the president of University of Pennsylvania since 2004 and has made such a large impact she was given an insanely large raise. I think this is interesting because the only reason she got a raise of that significance is because she has good fundraising skills. She now makes 4.3 million dollars a year which I think is crazy because of the amount of tuition charged to attend that university is so high and it probably is so high because it has to compensate people like her.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-spotify-isnt-killing-the-music-industry-after-all/
This article talks about how if streaming music is displacing sales, at what rate. Spotify has been increasing in the users ever since 2010, compared to Pandora and other music apps. The article talks about how people are streaming stuff that is popular at the same time they are buying stuff that is also popular. Therefore, it is hard for sales to analyze the effect of one activity towards another. So researchers though they should look at the streaming activity as a whole with the sales as a whole as well.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2015-nfl-predictions/
This article is about the 2015 NFL predictions. “FiveThirtyEight” uses a calculator to predict which teams have a chance of advancing to the playoffs and winning the next super bowl. The calculator uses the average wins, loses, and point difference of each team and makes calculates the odds of each team making it to the playoffs and or winning the super bowl. This prediction chart changes by the week. it goes all the way back to when pre-season started.

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2015/aug/20/donald-trump-dominating-media-coverage
This article uses media data to show the people’s fixation on each of the major candidates for the 2016 Presidential election. The data shows mentions of the candidates’ names in online news, mainstream sites, newspapers, magazines, and TV programs. Overall, the data shows that Donald Trump leads most of the coverage from all of the media outlets, but there is a fair spread of all of the candidates. I found this data to be interesting because it shows that there is a lot of public interest in Donald Trump’s campaign and that audiences engage the election through different outlets. Personally, I use TV and online news to get my updates on the election.

This article explains and gives a data visualization about the gap in earnings between men and women who graduate from the elite colleges in the US. It shows that women make a significantly less amount of money than men do within 10 years after graduation. The difference increases the more prestigious the school is, and decreases the less prestigious. The article points out, “The gap is largest at M.I.T.: $58,100. Women who enrolled at Harvard are making as much as men who enrolled at Tufts.” This is really interesting because equal pay and wage differences has been a hot topic in politics lately, as well as the financial stability of students after graduation. This also hits home for me because both my parents went to an Ivy League college, and my mother my makes less money than my father. It’s interesting to see that this isn’t just my family, but there is data to prove that this is a common trend.

http://insidebigdata.com/2015/11/03/making-its-way-into-the-mainstream-the-hadoop-market-is-accelerating/
The article I found is called Making its way into the mainstream, the Hadoop market is accelerating published on Nov 3, 2015.
This article discusses how companies can – and should – move beyond its storage capabilities, using more computing nodes to increase their processing power, and the growth of industry-focused applications built on Hadoop’s framework. This article discusses the current and future trends and the demand of Hadoops and the main distributors of the platform.

http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/oracle-sees-future-a-traditional-targeting/301184/
This article depicts a new method of age and gender demographic identification by Oracle. This applies the traditional demographic segmentation of TV media advertising to digital platforms. Due to the increasing number of online video content creators advertisers are looking for a way to identify each host’s primary viewer demographics in a similar method to broadcast television channels. Validated using Nielsen and Comscore ratings, Oracle Data Cloud’s Validated Demographics aims to ensure advertisers that they are reaching the demographics they’re looking for to reduce wasted advertising revenue on non-applicable demographics.

Why Big Data Is a ‘How’ at UPS, Not a ‘What’

This article is a case study on the data collection methods adopted by the shipping giant UPS. It talks about how UPS implemented a prescriptive technique of data collection and analytics, and worked on improving future collection of data rather than fixing old data. This in turn led to a centralization of data collection processes and enabled UPS to reduce the time taken to deliver packages, reduce the miles traveled per driver, significantly reduce fuel usage and thus reduce carbon dioxide emissions while also reducing their costs.

14 NFL stats you won't believe (like the one about Brandon Weeden setting a good NFL record)
This article discusses NFL statistics, saying who is the leader of which stat. It is interesting to me because while it point out the obvious, it does an excellent job of surprising me. it is revenant to me because football is my favorite sport, and I am always curious to read about data that pertains to it.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-1-percents-earnings-could-be-stagnating-at-671000/
I found this article interesting because it talks about how much the 1 percent earned this year and how they believe their earnings might be stabilizing. Their data shows how the average top 1 percent of wage earners made $617,061 in 2014, increased 4.9 percent since 2013. In contrast their data also shows how the bottom 90 percent of wage earners just got a 1.4 percent pay raise. Their data also shows that during the recession the top 1 percent struggled the most but they recovered more quickly than the 90 percent. I find this data and information interesting because it shows how separate and divided wage earners are looked at, it’s also relevant to me because I’m a wage earner.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-week-in-college-football-more-than-just-alabama-lsu/

This article shows percentage of projected outcomes for the top 25 college football teams. It is interesting to see who they are picking for the college football playoff and they also give the percentage chance of each team to win their division. They have given Temple a 41% chance to win their division which is impressive because they give Memphis and Houston 21% and 30% chances respectively. They are both in our conference, so this is good news for Temple.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-spotify-isnt-killing-the-music-industry-after-all/

This article talks about Spotify and the common misconception that it actually hurts artists as opposed to benefiting them. As an avid Spotify user, I know of far more musicians than before, resulting in supporting them in merchandise and social media. Also, Spotify helped lower the rate of pirated music simply because it’s relatively inexpensive and very fluid to use. Not only does Spotify provide a source of revenue for music artists, but it helps lower pirated music.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-republican-establishment-inches-toward-marco-rubio/
This article from FiveThirtyEight talks about how Marco Rubio is gaining ground. The graph they have on the article shows a sudden surge in the GOP’s endorsement of a candidate. This is interesting to me because Marco Rubio has been under the radar in the republican race but after an excellent last debate he has surged upward. The data also shows others having a trend that is beginning to stabilize so Rubio may continue to rise.

http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball/story/0ap3000000576687/article/opportunity-report-week-9-backfield-touches-leaders

This article is essentially just describing some of the more successful backfield in the NFL. It lists some of the recent stats and touches for halfbacks on NFL football teams and explains from that data how efficient the backfield was and how it seems to be effecting the team. For example, they list the data from the Eagles loaded backfield, and talk about how an efficient backfield seems to lead to winning formula for the Eagles this season.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-spotify-isnt-killing-the-music-industry-after-all/
This article relates to me because I use spotify almost everyday. Some people believe that music streaming is hurting the music industry because people are not buying the artist albums. Really spotify may have helped the music industry in some ways. It allows people to listen to more music that they might not have heard without the freedom to listen to who they want. This can help unknown artist build a fan base on social media. Spotify has helped lower the rate of illegally downloaded music. Artist also get compensated per listen.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/252658
I chose this article is because is recently posted,so it’s not outdated. and it’s business related. this article gave us great tips on using data as a resourceful advantage. first we need to aim our data’s consumer, with the right target we will find out the purpose of this data, then choose the correct way the data, last make it easy to understand.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/19/half-of-data-connections-by-top-500-android-apps-are-covert-with-no-effect-on-user-experience

This article follows the data tracking done by app developers on the apps they release in the Android and Apple app store. A recent study found that of all the data being tracked by these groups only half was used for improving the user experience and usability of the application. This begs the question, what are big companies like Walmart and eBay doing with all that additional data? This will continue to be a topic of discussion as large companies try to squeeze every last drop out of its customers in the name of profits.

Most Common Use of Time, By Age and Sex

This article is interesting to me because it shows how males and females in different age ranges spend their days. It’s interesting to see how different age groups and genders spend the majority of their time. For example, people 15-24 spend far more time on school and sleeping whereas people aged 25 to 34 are spending more time on work and travel/