Ryan Stifnell

I think the biggest takeaway from this course is just how quickly and drastically our world is moving toward data. Data is the future of not just the business world, but society at large, with large amounts of data being taken from social media, Google searches, reviews, etc. Data is an incredible indicator and predictor for success for companies.…[Read more]

YouTube is a website/app that millions of people use everyday to view videos about all different kinds of things. In Excel, a row would be a specific video and the columns could be the name of the video, the date posted, the genre of the video (music, sports, travel, etc.), the length of the video, the number of views it has, the number of…[Read more]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-an-nhl-player-finally-score-50-goals-in-50-games-again/
This article is about how there are only 5 players in the entire NHL history that have scored 50 goals in the first 50 games of the season, and the last to do it were 25 years ago. However, due to data on previous seasons, looking at trends, there’s…[Read more]

A KPI that I use regularly is the “miles until empty” feature on my car. It’s specific and measurable because it gives me exactly how many miles more I can drive until I run out of gas and is more measurable than a normal gas gauge. It’s achievable in the event that I want to only drive a certain amount of miles per week or fill my gas tank up to…[Read more]

I think that Number 3 is the most important mistake to avoid. Not backing up your data and then accidentally losing all of your work is one of the absolute worst things that can happen to you, especially when working with a deadline. I think the rule is most important because it goes across the board in a general sense too. If you don’t backup…[Read more]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/college-professors-arent-killing-religion/

Due to some comments made by the President’s son at an Alabama university, the conversation of whether or not college professors discourage religious beliefs has come up once again. The data in this article highly suggests that many people, especially Millennials,…[Read more]

I think that “ask why” is the most important of the 8 core principles. This is the whole reason we look at data, to figure out the why. It’s not enough to just see what is happening, but in order to actually be able to utilize the results properly we have to understand why it’s happening the way it’s happening. That can help us figure out what…[Read more]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/irma-is-bearing-down-on-some-of-floridas-most-vulnerable-residents/
This article is about how Hurricane Irma affected some of the most vulnerable people in Florida. The article describes three populations that were greatly affected by the superstorm: migrant workers, those living in mobile homes, and those 65…[Read more]

Growing up I often heard that you can’t have a good, successful career without a college degree. However, I’ve heard of many CEOs of successful businesses that don’t have college degrees. One of the ways I would disprove this would be to do a survey of current CEOs or top executives of over 100 businesses and see how many of them do and don’t have…[Read more]