Laurel Miller

http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2016/1/20/health-care-organizations-report-data-breaches-affecting-thousands

The article I found briefly discusses a few data breaches within healthcare organizations. Two of the breaches stemmed from employees stealing data, either by emailing it to themselves or taking a tablet with spreadsheets of patient information. I found this interesting as the government has mandated all doctors offices and healthcare companies to move from paper charts to paperless, with everything being online only, and there are already a number of breaches happening and most doctors havent even gone paperless yet.

http://www.people-press.org/2015/07/23/gops-favorability-rating-takes-a-negative-turn/

http://www.people-press.org/2015/07/23/gops-favorability-rating-takes-a-negative-turn/

The article here concerns the recent drop in favorability of the republican party over the course of 2015, and goes into other details concerning the political happenings of current days. Essentially, this may be due to the lack of a (excuse my personal bias) completely respectable and viable republican candidate. No one seems to be pleased with anything that the GOP is bringing to the table these days, aside from a smaller minority, and personally I would think it is due to the current standing of the race for the presidency. Overall, this article was very interesting because it uses data to show which topics are held more in favor to be handled by each party, which I thought was quite intriguing.

http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/datablog/2016/jan/21/the-schools-that-topped-the-2015-gcse-league-table-by-region

This article is from The Guardian Newspaper, shows the rating comparison between different schools in various regions in England. This rating data is made according to the proportion how many students from each school get more A in English or Math throughout GCSE exams. I found this article and the data really interested because it basically show off the studying abilities of schools between regions in England. Therefore, it somehow makes me curious to see differences they have in the country.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/2016/01/15/eu-bosses-can-snoop-on-your-private-messages-at-work/
The article I read dealt with an employees privacy at work. It was about an employee in Romania who sent a private email using his company’s computer and his employer viewed the message. The European Union ruled that the company was allowed to look up and view the data in the email because it was sent on their computer. This is interesting to me, because I work for Cigna and I know they can view our messages and emails but they do encourage us to log onto social media during our lunch breaks and I’m curious if they are allowed to see what you post at work while on Facebook or Twitter. I’m pretty sure they would be able to do that.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/01/22/apple-expands-maps-capabilities-with-new-flyover-nearby-and-traffic-location-data
The article I chose is about Apple expanding its Map capabilities to show an aerial or “flyover” view of locales in the world. This does not directly relate to my major (risk management) but I am thinking of changing it to MIS, which would have a strong correlation to this article. I find it to be extremely interesting because Apple used data to find traffic location in places such as Hong Kong and Mexico to help people in the world see where traffic is backed up or at a stop. I also found it interesting because Apple is competing with Google’s Street View to create a more detailed focus of metropolitan cities so that people could navigate better.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-the-internet-predict-the-oscars/ This article is interesting to me because instead of basing Oscar predictions on expert opinions, the people featured are taking everyday data and turning it into possibly more accurate guesses than any expert could have. It’s cool to read the different methods they have thought of, and compare the limitations of those methods/models. I’m excited to find out if the model utilizing the number of headlines on an actor/film is better able to predict than the model compiling positive and negative tweets.

The Spurs’ Bench Could Probably Make The Playoffs On Its Own

This article, from FiveThirtyEight, tries to demonstrate how good the San Antonio Spurs’ backup players are by showing, through data, that they would be able to make the playoffs if they were their own team. The analysis is driven by the Box Plus/Minus rating which measures a basketball player’s performance and its affect on the team’s performance. Interestingly enough, if the Spurs’ back up players were to have their own team and play regular minutes as starters, they would be able to perform as the 6th best team in the NBA. This article is relevant to myself as an MIS major because it shows how one can analyze data to make predictions and come to conclusions.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2016/01/22/thinking-big-about-big-data-in-insurance/#27136be13377

Big data is transforming the insurance industry in big ways. Data controls insurance because it is used in creating models for pricing for consumers. According to Tom Warden, big data will allow insurance companies to discover new insurance products and to better predict future events. This includes usage-based insurance pricing which prices insurance based off live data from the customer.

LeBron’s Cavs Are The Best Team Ever To Fire Its Coach Midseason

This article I found on FiveThirtyEight briefly discusses the firing of Cleveland Cavalier’s head coach David Blatt. Even though Blatt led the team to the NBA Finals last season and has a 30-11 record currently this year, his firing portrays how coaching in the NBA is not an easy task. I found the data table very interesting to look at as it showed all the coaches who were fired/resigned during midseason with an Elo rating of 1550 or higher. The average Elo rating in the league is 1500 so having an Elo rating above that indicates a really good team. The Cavaliers had an Elo rating of 1669 which is really good which leads us to question if Lebron James had anything to do with Blatt’s firing. This article interested me since I am a big basketball fan.

The Stock Market Is Not The Economy

The article starts with the 500 points decline of the Dow Jones Industrial Average last week. However, that declining number, according to the author, does not reflect the global economic development as a whole. China reported last week that its DPG had grown 6.9% in 2015, the slowest growth of the country in 25 years. On the other side of the world, the figure that top richest 1% of the world possess roughly 50% of the global wealth stills makes people contemplate a lot. The article summarizes a week in economics with decline, growth and economic inequality that we still have to fight against.

http://www.businessinsider.com/spotify-user-data-2016-1

This article provides the reader with the knowledge about amount of data that is produced by Spotify listeners. With the data that is being produced, they can activity predict the type of music that you would like at certain times of the day. Spotify is throwing around the idea of adding more media to their primarily music platform, like implementing podcasts for an example. Spotify, by harnessing and processing their data, will create a better listening platform for their users and find new ways to create more invested and active users.

Kawhi Leonard Is The Most Well-Rounded Elite Shooter Since Larry Bird

This article from FiveThirtyEight discusses the young basketball star, Kawhi Leonard. At 24, he is currently in his fourth year as an NBA player, and already has a Defensive Player of the Year award and a Finals MVP award. The article discusses how Leonard has emerged as a serious threat from three-point range, which has significantly improved his all-around game. Leonard was efficient in other areas of the game before the start of this season, such as defense, rebounding, assists, and usage, but the development of his three-point shot has given him the efficiency of Larry Bird, an NBA legend and Hall of Famer. The article concludes by reminding the reader of Leonard’s young age, implying that he will only improve more as he ages.

Everyone Is Freaking Out About The $1.5 Billion Powerball, And The Stats Agree

I find this article interesting because it talks about the chance of winning the lottery. I myself do not believe in the chance of winning the lottery (maybe because I major in Actuarial Science). However, I am fascinated by how people still spend money on lottery despite all the probability and all the articles about the chances of winning. This article is worth the read as it analyzes many aspects of the lottery and the probability of winning in the new model.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/12/shops-could-soon-be-targeting-ads-according-to-your-feet
The article I chose talks about how shops could soon be targeting ads according to your feet. I found this article interesting because I have heard of facial recognition profiling, but using feet to profile people is not something you hear or see on a daily basis. Data scientist have developed tech that can analyze the style and size of people’s footwear as they walk past. The system can make judgments on demographic, footfall, and predict the gender of the person.

Are We Headed For Another Recession?

This article is interesting to me because I have another class discussed about the recession recently. It’s interesting that the business cycle is normally about 5 years, but now the economy has expansion for 7 years and we do not know when will the next recession comes or what will affect it. This article claims that it is about time that a recession is coming due to the average of economic expansion, the changes of global market and the current situation of economic.

FiveThirtyEight’s Guide To Predicting The Oscars

This article is establishing the Oscar model of predicting candidates for different awards like the best actor, the best picture, the best director and the best supporting actress. This model is built based on their prediction of the insight of the Oscar Award and also from other press awards and insider awards. From the perspective of marketing, the popularity of the market of different film genres either in an award or in the public can be concluded as well. I found it interesting because watching movies is one of my biggest hobbies and it’s surprise to know the data can have such power in movie industry and maybe in other industries as well.

Spurs-Warriors Is The Best Defense-Offense Clash In NBA History

The article I did is about two of the greatest NBA teams that basketball has ever witnessed. What makes the teams so great is that not only have these teams dominated nightly, they’ve both been equally superb offensively and defensively as well. According to data stating the NBA’s highest team ratings ever, this Spurs vs Warriors game is ranked number one, making it something you only see later during the championship. I am very interested in sports marketing, so this article is right up my alley. Truly, this is a one-of-a-kind matchup with data that just puts the icing on the cake.

http://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/the-rise-stumble-and-future-of-lululemon

This article discusses how Lululemon grew as a brand over the last decade. It discusses the companies culture and highlights their growth in sales and revenues. It also talks about how the company over came many obstacles and what the future looks like for the brand. I’m very interested in this article because I love Lululemon’s clothes and their corporate culture, one day I would love to work for them.

Were There 6 Percent More Murders Last Year, Or 16 Percent?

This article focuses on the national increase in murder rates for 2015. According to the article, the murder rate was up by 6.2% within the first half of 2015, which proved to be quite shocking (annual record nationwide for the highest increase in murders is at 9% in 1990). Also, this article mentions how cities are statistically proven to be more of “murder hot spots,” Philadelphia being one of them. I found this article interesting due to my interest in the city of Philadelphia, criminal justice, and of course, the hit television show Criminal Minds.

The Panthers’ First-Half Blowouts Are Unprecedented

What is interesting about the article is that the data observed in this study further broadens by an NFL game being based on the Vegas spread, or better known as a team giving a 50-50 chance to win whether it is they are the +/- points. What stood out to me is the Carolina Panthers ending the first quarter of their two playoffs game with an average probability of 91 after the first quarter ended. The team did not stop there and increased it by 8 percent around the time halftime came around which is reasonable with how well the defense of the team plays along with Cam Newton on his way to MVP stardom.

http://www.ibmbigdatahub.com/blog/how-improve-bank-fraud-detection-data-analytics
This article discusses how data could be used to formulate a strong bank fraud detection strategy. According to the article, by developing advanced data analytics software that recognizes suspicious patterns (such as unusually high purchases of popular items, multiple accounts being opened in a short period with similar data, etc.), banks can quickly detect and act on potential fraudsters, thus minimizing losses for both the financial institution and its customers. Banking data analytics therefore provides an effective tool to fight against bank fraud.

You Can’t Trust What You Read About Nutrition

The reason this article caught my eye in the first place is that I am currently worried about how a popular Facebook page in my country is posting random nutrition facts gathered from dubious sources all over the Internet. This page has more than a million likes, making misinformation even more devastating.

This article explores the fundamental flaws of common methods of nutrition research and suggests that a breakthrough in data collection is needed for us to find more accurate and meaningful results. The article is interesting to me as it poses two important questions: When will we have this breakthrough ? In the meantime, what should we do about our food ?

Everyone Is Freaking Out About The $1.5 Billion Powerball, And The Stats Agree

The lottery bonus is a hot topic recently. The huge number of bonus made more people expected to get the money. And the tickets had been sold even more than three times of the population of the United States. These data of lottery exposed people’s desire of unearned money, and can control a lot of people through relevant methods.

Most Americans Aren’t Middle Class Anymore

This article explains the decline in the middle class and middle income households in America. Politicians make this out to a be a bad thing but there are many factors that effect this decline and they are not all bad. First off, the population is living longer and the average person is older which cause the median income to drop because retirees have little income. Also, there has been rise in upper income households and not a very big increase in low income households. Immigrants are known to have a lower income than a US citizens and there has been increase in immigrants in the US lately. All these factors cause the middle class to shrink and it is not as bad as it seems.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/27/investor-worries-brexit-sterling-volatility-eu-referendum
The reason why this article attract me is that it explain the worries of investors about the influnce of Brexit on money market. There is no doubt that Britain exit from the EU is the heated issue in international society. Many investors afraid that Brexit will create a negative effect on money market. As a result, they decide to sell their pound. This article use data to illustrate this trend in money market and make some predictions. As a risk management and insurance major student, I gain a lot from this article about how to avoid the risk in money market

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/27/investor-worries-brexit-sterling-volatility-eu-referendum
The reason why this article attract me is that it explain the worries of investors about the influnce of Brexit on money market. There is no doubt that Britain exit from the EU is the heated issue in international society. Many investors afraid that Brexit will create a negative effect on money market. As a result, they decide to sell their pound. This article use data to illustrate this trend in money market and make some predictions. As a risk management and insurance major student, I gain a lot from this article about how to avoid the risk in money market.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35425735

This article is about the on going immigrant crisis in Europe. There is really no good answer to the issues that they face, I personally feel like the developed world should help take care of the under developed, but frankly, once you see the numbers of people they are dealing with, its frankly not possible. This is all important because this is the largest mass migration of people of our times, at least with in the last century, and is only getting worse not better. The numbers make it clear that only more immigrants will be showing up over the next few years and most all European countries are at or past capacity to deal with them.

Job Growth Was Great In December, But Can It Last?

This article discusses how the job market in the United States ended in 2015 on an unexpected high note. The new year is now in question due to it’s rocky start. The new year has also begun with a giant plunge in the China stock market. This interested me because my major is Finance and am looking into the investing aspect. Although this is an article about the current job market, a lot of data has been collected to prove this. Data from different companies employment, to people who are unemployed but looking, and people who are unemployed and not looking for a job have all been collected. All of these data sets were accounted for before the making of this article.

Is Uber Making NYC Rush-Hour Traffic Worse?

I find this article from FiveThirtyEight and it is talking about a very popular ride-to-hire company which is Uber. The main topic for this article is Uber making NYC rush-hour traffic worse. I am interested in about this article because I really like using Uber than taxi when I go outside for the long distance. In my experience, taking Uber as a traffic tool is better others, not only we can call the drivers anytime and anywhere, but also it is comfortable. From the article, there is a lot of data to find out the answer. Analyzing the data from the research, the fact is more and more people like to using Uber, but the Uber company already try to reduce the cars number off the road and they will still keep doing so. The number of Uber pickup is increase, but we can not trough this data to prove the every car is belong to the Uber company. But we can not deny that more and more people like to using Uber.

The Stock Market Is Not The Economy

This article is a basic reminder to the rational investor that a heavy downward trend in the market is not necessarily the indication of Judgement Day. In fact, the numbers posted by the stock market in the new year are highly precedented, occurring in in 21 of the past 66 years. What people need to understand is that pulling out of the market does not any way impact the overall economy positively, but rather, creates economic instability and causes unrest in the public eye, both nationally and internationally. The belief that every market downturn is the proverbial “doomsday” is an absurd rationale that only causes an unnecessary uproar and sense of distrust in the nation from foreign markets. The key point of this article is to remind American investors that a trigger-happy selling mindset can not possibly benefit us. We must remain calm, stick to our guns, and hold out in these small rough patches if we’re ever to gain anything individually, nationally, and globally. It is our duty to keep the American markets strong, and not cast doubt on historically sound investments over some relatively common hysteria.

Big Data Analytics: Do Machines Have Biases?

This is an article that reminded me of a topic we discussed during on of our classes. If we did not discuss it during class I would think it is ridiculous to say that computers or machines have biases like humans do. Although, during class we said how if you search an item it can appear on outer websites or your Facebook because the search engine knows that you were interested in that particular item. In this article it addresses the fact that computers and machines can be bias too. It doesn’t take just more data to eliminated other data that can be swayed or tainted. These biases come from the data the machine is using. An example that was used in class and this article deals with Hurricane Sandy. Since machines would collect the social media data, like tweets, it seemed as if Manhattan was hit the worst but it didn’t include data from the poorer areas were misrepresented because they could not tweet about it. When using analytics, data scientists need to account for things like selection bias.

Why Betting Data Alone Can’t Identify Match Fixers In Tennis

This article is interesting because it shows that almost everything in this world is corrupted, which in this case it’s because of match fixing in tennis. I like this article because it shows that corruption is a problem that is hard to overcome even though today there’s tons of data that can be collected and used to overcome the problem. This article proves that even with a lot of data being collected these days, human behavior will always change dynamically. No two collections of data can ever be equally the same as one another. In data collection, I guess small variation do make a big difference and we can’t only rely on data to understand human behavior.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/27/federal-reserve-interest-rates-unchanged-global-markets-recession

– As an economics major, I always find the market place activity interesting. I think we could be on the edge of a very slippery slope. This of course correlates to the federal reserve and the worth of a dollar. Hopefully it’ll be picking up from here, but I won’t be the only one finding the data of the stocks interesting if it doesn’t!!! I think more people will start to pay attention.

A Sanders Comeback Would Be Unprecedented

This fivethirtyeight article summarizes the current uphill battle that Bernie sanders is currently facing in order to still capture the democratic nomination for president. Taking into consideration the remaining primaries, and the number of delegates he would need to win in order to overcome the comfortable lead that Hilary Clinton has established, he would need to not only win all of the remaining primaries left until the democratic national convention, but also for Hilary Clinton to begin loosing in states she has been known to succeed Also taking into consideration the national polling average, along with the polling average in all of the remaining states with primaries, the chances for a Sanders victory has now become more unlikely everyday.

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-interactive/2016/may/03/your-tax-dollars-how-is-the-government-spending-your-money

This website gives an interactive graphic of how the government is spending our tax dollars. This article is interesting because we all pay taxes and it gives an insight as to what what our money is being used for. It also shines a light as to what expenditure takes up the most money. This website lets the user see how much of their money is taking out by adjusting your projected income.

An example of a conventional wisdom is the belief that movies are only successful if it stars a famous actor/actress. Although this may be true as the audience will be more inclined to watch a movie in which their favorite actors/actresses are in, but there has been many movies with no real star and it has become a big hit. This can be tested by comparing movies with famous actors/actresses with those without them and see which has been a success.

A common conventional wisdom that people believe is that if you want to lose weight you should do a lot of cardio. However, it is true that high intensity intervals are better for weight loss. This theory could be tested by getting a simple random sample of people and splitting them into two groups and have them all on the same diet with one group doing cardio and the other doing high intensity workouts for a month and tracking their weight loss to see which method of working out is more effective with weight loss based on the percent of weight loss each group of people had.

One example of conventional wisdom is that salt is harmful to a person’s diet and health. We think of that today as common sense but in reality it has little evidence that can back that statement up. Scientists have recently found that too little of salt in someone’s diet can be more harmful. We can try and test this by gathering two people with relatively the same health and lifestyle then change their previous diets. You can assign one with a high salt intake diet and the other with a low, close to nothing, salt intake diet. After a couple weeks we test the areas that doctors originally stated were affected negatively by salt and the areas of a persons health that are said to be affected with low salt intake. We can test their blood pressure, likeliness of a stoke, sugar levels for type 2 diabetes, etc. After an extended period of time and couple tests we can see if salt is actually the factor in a person’s bad health.

One piece of conventional wisdom that I have heard is that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Many people believe that in order to achieve a successful and productive day, one must eat an adequate breakfast. This idea can be tested by gathering two groups of people. One group would be provided with a nutritious breakfast while another would not be provided with a breakfast. These two groups would partake in various tasks and be measured on their performance. Based on performance, one would be able to identify the effectiveness of having breakfast.

Conventional wisdom often conveys the idea that young parents are usually the worst, and have the least to give to their children. This could easily be fought against and disproven by various data tests, perhaps by interviewing various teenagers and to have them rate their childhoods. Obviously this would include other variables, so there would need to be a way to narrow the data collection. As a child who has a mother only 18 years older than them, I can say myself that such wisdom is untrue, and could most definitely be fought by performing some sort of study that attempts to find a correlation between age of parents and happiness.

A piece of conventional wisdom that I am familiar with is “Reading books regularly makes one more knowledgeable and intelligent”. One way to test whether this statement is true or not is to conduct a survey. Firstly, randomly selected participants will provide the average number of books they read per year. All surveyed participants will then take cognitive tests and a general knowledge test. Meaningful patterns between the average numbers of books read annually and these test scores, which are relative measurements of intelligence and knowledge, can confirm or disprove the statement above.

As a big sports fan, an example of conventional wisdom that I hear often is that “practice makes perfect”. Michael Jordan is the epitome of this bit of conventional wisdom. He worked harder than anybody else in the entire NBA and practiced for hours each and every day, even after games that wiped out all of his energy. He practiced his basketball skills more than anybody else, and he has five MVP awards and six championship trophies to back it up. While this is just one example, there are plenty of players in the NBA that are the first ones on the court and the last ones to leave that have developed tremendously due to their commitment to practicing,

An example of a conventional wisdom that I often hear is, “The early bird gets the worm”. Many people believe that a morning person is more likely to be productive and successful, as an early bird tends to be energetic and proactive during the day while a night owl always feels sleepy. However, night owls can also get their worms. Science has collected data and done many experiments to show that night owls are actually more artistic and more risk-seeking, which can even lead to higher chances of financial success. Also, while early birds’ energy dies out very quick throughout the day, night owls’ energy persists until very late at night. Be that as it may, early birds have an advantage that most activities take place from 9AM-5PM, the time when night owls are not “fully awake”.

One example of conventional wisdom that I have heard throughout my life is the saying, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” To test the legitimacy of this saying, I would simply conduct two month-long experiments. For the first month, the test subject would consume an apple once every day, and information such as his/her blood sugar level, body temperature, etc. would be recorded daily. For the second month, I would simply record the subject’s health information such as before, but the subject has to be apple-free for the whole month. By comparing these two months of information, one might be able to learn whether one would be more or less immune to catching certain sicknesses (the flu, stomach virus, etc.).

An example of conventional wisdom that I have heard throughout my entire life is that “hamburger makes people fat easily”. We can conduct a survey to test whether this statement is true or not. First of all, we can randomly select some healthy people around 22 years. Secondly, divide these people into two groups, on group of people eat hamburger only every day. Another group have common meals as usual. The important thing is that these two group people do not exercise. Every week, we can collect the data about fat content from two groups and figure out average. After a month, the final fat content we get from two group people is the result. The difference between two data (fat content) can confirm or disprove the statement.

One example of conventional wisdom is that people earn more money as they get higher degrees. This can be tested by surveying random individuals with different degree levels (high school, bachelor, master, etc.) and collecting data on their income and benefits. The result of the survey would show the relationship between one’s salary and the level of degree they’re having.

Some people said that students get better grades if they spend more time on study than others. I think there should have some relations between with the hours of working and the grades, but this won’t be correct every times. I can collect the average studied hours for each day and the final grade of some students in a specific semester. And draw a picture with this two variables, to test is there an actual relation between the hours we spend on study and our grades.

An example of conventional wisdom is that Americans think Chinese students are smart and good at Math. In fact,one reason is that Math is taught differently and more difficult in China. Besides,this statement does not apply to all the Chinese students. To test it, I would give out IQ tests to every chinese student in one university and also ask the admission of the university for the math grades in high schools or the math scores in the SAT of these chinese students.

A piece of conventional wisdom I have often heard is “You have to earn more.” In today’s society, there is a lot of pressure on picking majors that lead towards more lucrative, high paying careers. With higher cost of living, the potential costs of starting a family, and other various expenses, money has become a major concern for any individual entering adulthood. With that said, money should not be the main motivator for anyone when it comes to picking a career or any type of work for that matter. If money is the sole motivator for any type of career, the individual will likely end up in a job that they do not like very much, and isolate themselves into a lifestyle that does not make them happy. While money should be an important consideration in any future career, any individual should greatly consider if they will enjoy the line of work they would like to go into, since that most of the time becomes so much more important than the compensation that correlates with it.

An example of conventional wisdom that I have heard is that medicine has the same effect on men and women. However, it’s not true. For examples, aspirin can help men to prevent myocardial infarction, but it won’t work on women. To prove it, you can gather the information from the department which tests drugs effect on people, compare the information between men and women to see the same drug used on men and women had different function.

An example of conventional wisdom is that many believe that a college degree makes someone smarter than someone who didn’t go to college. This is extremely difficult to test because what defines someone as “smart”. Someone who is good at math, english, history? Often the people that are considered “book smart” lack common sense. Coming from a smaller town I know plenty of people who never went to college and are just as smart if not smarter than myself.

In particular, one specific piece of conventional wisdom that has impacted my life was Malcolm X’s quote “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today”. The ideal behind this is that those who maintain a well-organized, regimented lifestyle will overall be able to function better in society, and have the ability to maintain a higher status and position in their particular fields. To test this one, could issue a survey across all fields that questions the participants lifestyles in terms of cleanliness, hygiene and organization. Using this in-depth data, one would be able to construct a scatter plot to determine the accuracy of this claim. If cleanliness correlates to success and renown, one would be able to dictate that this hypothesis is likely to be true.

An example of conventional wisdom is hiring people with disability will be costly for the business. This is in fact not true and there are studies that have been done, which states that over half of the accommodations cost less than $500. You can test this out by gathering data from various companies to see how much is spent in providing reasonable accommodation for the disabled.

A piece of conventional wisdom that I have heard is that the tallest man running for president always wins the election best only upon the him being the tallest man running. It is believe that he who is tallest captures the most attention of the voters both on stage and when grouped around his opponents. One famous example often refereed in this case is the election of Abraham Lincoln (which is where I believe this myth started), and to my knowledge it has not ever been broken (with the possible exception of FDR who did stand during debates and was tall but spent most of his time in a wheel chair). In order to test this, I would simply need to gather data from presidential medical records, and where that is not available I can use pictures from debates to contrast and compare. Should this myth be proven true, it could have catastrophic impacts on the future of humanity, seeing how Trump is the tallest man running for president.

An example of conventional wisdom that I always hear, especially living with an Asian family is that “you have to be doctors or engineers to be successful”. Although these professions might give a higher income, these are not the only jobs that can lead to a successful life (stable income, happy life, etc). A way to test this is to gather a few people from the stated profession (doctors, engineers) and also a few people from other sectors such as accountants from the business field, baristas from the food and beverages market and even people who are starting or have started their own business/company. Then, we gather relevant data such as income, working hours, happiness/stress level and amount of free-time to do non-work things. After that, we can compare does really working as doctors and engineers the only way to be successful in life.

There is one example of conventional wisdom that I heard and I also believe it is true. It is if you read more books in you childhood you will become smarter. When people were young, their knowledge of world wasn’t clearly and maturity and their mind easily being affected by outside factors. So people can understand the world and get knowledge through reading books. Meanwhile, the more important benefit people can get from reading books is the way of thinking will be developed potentially. For example, people will solve the problems not only sanely but also emotionally. We can easily to prove this wisdom. We can tell how to present a person is smarter or not is he or she knows a lot of things that someone else doesn’t know. Someone will say if we experience lots of things we can also know a lot of things that others don’t know. This is true, however when we were young we don’t have much time or chances to experiencing. Reading books is the easiest way to make people become smarter.

A piece of conventional wisdom that I have heard is that when men start lifting when they are younger they are more likely to have stunted growth; they’ll be short. This could be disproved or supported by reported heights of men who lifted as pre-teens or young teens, as they approach twenty three (the age where men stop growing). However, another thing to consider is genetics, which would have to be identified before the reported heights occur; if someone is supposed to be short.

Hello Guys!

My name is Simerjot Sidhu, a senior at the Fox School of Business. This past summer and December break, I interned at AmeriHealth Caritas. I worked at the Information Systems department. Most of my duties were on the Quality Assurance side. I created and designed test plans/cases to be used during manual and automated testing. I also automated numerous tests that were apart of larger national projects. One tool which I recommend everyone to be familiar one is SQL. Even knowing the basis of SQL is beneficial. If you have any more questions about my role, please let me know!

Have a good day!
Sim Sidhu

My name is Rachel Baker, and I am working at AmerisourceBergen in Chesterbrook, PA. AmerisourceBergen, or ABC, is a pharmaceutical wholesaling company focused on improving patient outcomes. ABC distributes drugs to Walgreens, other pharmacies, and some hospitals. I am on a team called Knowledge Management. One aspect of my team’s responsibilities is to assess data, such as statistics from the call center, and turn it into information by putting it into an understandable context for our customer CARE agents to reference.

Hi everyone! My name is David Yastremsky. I will be interning with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Philadelphia. The internship is a general business internship. I went through orientation today and am still learning my responsibilities. I suspect that I will be doing a lot with Excel as well as research.

My name is Danielle Sumislaski, and I am currently working as a Regional Marketing, Promotions, and Sponsorships Intern at Subaru of America, Inc. in Cherry Hill, NJ. It’s a year-long internship, so I started in June 2015 and will finish May 2016. My responsibilities vary by day. Some of my common responsibilities include working with data from our databases to create easy-to-read reports for upper management, performing social media audits for dealerships in the Eastern U.S., analyzing expenditures for different digital marketing platforms by dealership, and using Radian6 to find unhappy customers on social media.

Hello Everyone! I hope you all had a great holiday season. My name is Theodore Wilks, and I am a senior MIS major here at the Fox School of Business. This past summer, I interned at AmeriHealth Caritas in their Program Integrity department as a Business Analyst. My main responsibilities included providing project level support in the elicitation of business requirements, conducting interviews with project stakeholders and SME’s and assessing departmental wide impacts to the business process. If you’ve taken MIS 3504 (Digital Design and Innovation, otherwise known as the BA class) you know exactly what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t as yet, don’t worry. I can honestly say that class thoroughly prepared me for my role. Almost all of what I learned during class, I was able to apply while working. During my internship, I even brought in my books (Seven Steps to Mastering Business Analysis and Memory Jogger), met with the Senior Business Analyst who had been guiding me, and we discussed and documented new ways for managing different projects. If you have any questions about my role, please don’t hesitate to ask.

My name is Yebin Seo. This past summer and winter semester I was an IT intern at AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals. For my first assignment, I worked under a Business Analyst in the North American Commercial IT department writing business requirements and helping integrate various technologies into the company. Then, I was re-assigned to a Solutions Architect in the Global Commercial Operations team where I had the opportunity to take on a more technical role. I used SnapLogic to connect cloud-based data, and I also wrote API documentation using Swagger and Apigee.

My name is Lauren Sellers and I am a Digital Marketing Intern at AmerisourceBergen, a global healthcare solutions company. I started this internship in June 2015 and my main responsibilities were to support the marketing initiatives for the organization’s largest conference, ThoughtSpot, which is geared toward independent pharmacists. I managed the social media marketing, as well as assisted with the email marketing and updated our sales portal with materials for the sales teams to utilize when meeting with customers.

After the summer, I began to work more on the email marketing efforts in SalesForce Marketing Cloud/ExactTarget by creating HTML and template based emails, deploying the emails to targeted subscribers, and tracking the analytics (open rate, click rate, etc.). Additionally, I use project management software to ensure the completion of ongoing marketing projects while collaborating with teams across the US and Canada. Within the next several months, I will be working more with SalesForce to create and manage customer lists and working on the launch of a new business unit’s website.

My name is Kevin Quigley, and I currently work at AmerisourceBergen in Conshohocken, PA. AmerisourceBergen, or ABC, is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and serves a wide range of customers from large corporations like Walgreens, to smaller pharmacies. I have served as the Operations & Digital Marketing intern in the marketing department since June, and have continued my internship into the current school year. Some of my duties include serving as a point of contact between members of the marketing team and external vendors, creating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for internal use, and assisting in budget management for the department. In the upcoming months, I will be helping in the ongoing development of a digital project, where ABC is attempting to improve 30+ websites that are related to various functions of the business that are either inactive or out of date.

Hello fellow members of MIS 3581! My name is Kyle Domsohn and I am a senior in the Fox Business School. I am interning for the Accolade Management Services in King of Prussia, PA. One of the services provided by Accolade is the management of associations. I first started with Accolade in August when they first acquired the association, ISOP (the Insurance Society of Philadelphia). As a business analyst, my first project was to analyze, document, and implement a solution for ISOP’s in-state operational procedure. After the success of my first project, I am now working on my second project, the analysis of ISOP’s out-of-state procedures. Since each state has a unique set of requirements, my main focus thus far has been researching and documenting the requirements for each out-of-state. During this analysis, I extensively work with Accolade’s Microsoft Access database and rely on Microsoft Excel to document and organize the requirements of each out-of-state.

Hello everyone, my name is Nick Hockley and I am a graduating MIS major. I have been working part-time at SEI Investments since October and am currently working within the operations department providing data quality assistance on the business intelligence team. Since my start I have worked on developing multiple procedures and processes, participated in the development of various ad-hoc reports, and reorganized old and uploaded new files to our department’s sharepoint. More specifically, I created a privacy breach procedure that is now integrated on their sharepoint and used across the operations department. Along with the procedure I developed an awareness campaign that will be integrated into the future new hire process for our department. This is an example of one of the things I have done so far at SEI, if you have any questions on my approach to developing these procedures feel free to reach out!

Hi classmates,

I am a former Business Services Sales Operations Intern for Comcast Corporation, and a junior Finance and MIS double major. As an intern at Comcast, I worked at the company’s headquarters on a variety of back-office tasks, and I supported many different teams within the Business Services department of the company. I participated in many projects, such as salesforce audits and pricing strategy analyses. I also helped schedule events and meetings with Factor8, an inside sales consulting firm. I served as an asset to many different project managers in the company. And furthermore, I deployed various internal communication documentation as a Salesforce.com administrator. I wore many hats for the company, and thoroughly enjoyed my experiences supporting Philadelphia’s largest company.

Hello everyone,
My name is Alex Charles and I am currently working for QVC in the Corporate Procurement department. I started at QVC last May as a procurement intern and my main job was doing a lot of back-end support on our custom built P2P system. Since then I have transitioned into a technology buyer role where I do data analytics and negotiations with vendors to come up with the best prices for on premise software systems, SaaS agreements, and technology infrastructure. I also help with requisitions for all of the devices that our application development team uses for testing so I always have my hands on the latest tech toys. I will be continuing this internship until June when I will then become full-time.

Hello everyone, my name is Courtney Kasztelan and I am currently working for ReminderMedia, the producer of American Lifestyle magazine, in King of Prussia. I started in August as a Business Development intern where I learned how to use ReminderMedia’s custom CRM system and eventually helped input data. Other roles included internet research for the company and working with the sales team to identify potential leads. Also, each week of the internship, we focused on a different area of the company to fully understand how the data is used and why it is important and had meetings every day with the intern coordinator and fellow interns. After completing the internship in December, I was asked to come back this semester as a Business Intelligence intern. This role will be less about imputing data into the CRM and more about solving complex business intelligence problems for the company using programs such as SAS Enterprise Miner and SQL. Right before I left in December, I worked with the current Business Intelligence team on an SAS project using large sets of data to try to figure out ideal customers for ReminderMedia. I start up again tomorrow, so I am anxious to see what the new projects are and how the SAS project has progressed.

Hi everyone,

My name is Leigh McKenzie and I’m a senior here at Fox majoring in MIS and minoring in Digital Marketing. For the last 6 months, I have been working for an SEO consulting firm – I’m From The Future (IFTF). Our company specializes in SEO but we also provide web design and content marketing services. A few things I have worked in for clients include: technical SEO audits, analytics tracking & reporting, hosting management, web design and development, and more. Since I started working here, our team has more than doubled from 4 employees to now 10. As such, my role is moving more towards client project management and I’m excited to see what I can accomplish with this new responsibility.

Hi Everyone – My name is Trevor Johnson, and i am a senior in the Fox School with a Major in MIS and a minor in Marketing. I have recently accepted an internship with Comcast Cable where i will be working in their state and local tax department as a Tax, Business Intelligence intern. In this group i will support the state and local tax team by maintaining SQL databases with large volumes of data for tax and compliance and audits. In addition to this, i will be responsible for thoroughly documenting and testing the procedures in the database, while writing reports and providing data analysis with trending and fluctuation metrics as it relates to tax. I am scheduled to start on the 31st of January, and have training scheduled for the 20th, 25th, and 27th of this month. I am very excited to begin this position as it is supposed to transition into a full time roll. Please let me know if you have any additional questions and good luck with all of your internships!

Hello classmates, my name is Bridgette Weirich. I am a senior MIS major and I will be graduating in May. This semester, I will be continuing my internship at Tokio Marine North American Services (TMNAS) in Bala Cynwyd. I was lucky enough to be asked back after my internship with them in Summer and Fall 2015. At TMNAS, I am working as a Project Management Office and Service Management Intern. My first day for my Spring internship was on Thursday, January 20. At TMNAS, I have and will be working with the PMO to help manage contractors and projects. In my spare time, I will also be working with Service Management on various other projects. I am excited to learn more from TMNAS this semester, specifically from the Project Management Office because I am interested in becoming a project manager in the future.

Hello everyone my name is Ibtihal Al-Froukh but I go by Ibby. This past summer I worked at ACE Group and had the opportunity to work there part time during the Fall 2015 semester. ACE Group is an insurance company which just completed its acquisition of Chubb and changing its name to Chibb Classics. The internship was a general business internship. I worked with the SVP of Global HR Operations and the IT department on an audit project where we had to determine where sensitive employee data was held. In addition, I have been working with Professor O’Donnell for a few semesters as and ITA for MIS2101 course.

Hi David! During my time at AZ, I worked in two different IT departments. My first job assignment was under the US Commercial IT department, and then my next assignment was under the Global IT department. I really enjoyed my time working in the pharmaceutical industry. I had the opportunity to learn about a company that uses technology as an enabler to have its medicines available to its patients. Overall, working in the pharmaceutical industry was rewarding because the work I was putting in was ultimately helping sick patients deal with their illnesses.

Hi everyone,
My name is Elspeth Vandegrift and I am a senior MIS minor and Human Resource Management major. This past summer through January I interned at Genesis Healthcare, a company providing skilled nursing and rehabilitative services in 48 of the 50 states. My internship was within the human resources department on the strategic side. So throughout the course of my internship I was able to a lot with finding, using, and analyzing data we had been collecting over the years but not really using. My primary projects included creating a staffing dashboard of metrics, working on projects for an upcoming merger, project management, and running a variety of reports weekly reports related to hires/terminations/staffing protocols, etc for our most at risk centers in terms of employee retention. The people I worked with were fantastic and I was able to meet with department heads across the company in addition to exploring the data to get both a quantitative and qualitative understanding of the company.

Hello Guys!
My name is Tyler Petrides, a senior at the Fox School of Business. This past fall I Interned for a Marketing company called ReminderMedia. I did so well with the opportunity that I have been given the chance to return in the spring as a Senior Sales Support/Operations Interns. My current experience requires me to analyze possible sales leads and correct data to give the sales callers the most fruitful leads possible. My internship is a lot of fun and I am continuing to gain great knowledge about the business world through my time here. One thing i really enjoyed about my first semester experience was the exposure to higher level executives within the company. Interns were able to meet and talk to the CEO and CIO which was a great experience. If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.