Sara Hable

What I found to be the most important takeaway from this course was learning that data is not always objective and accurate. As seen in the data cleaning exercises we did, sometimes just making sure the data is accurate and if not, fixing it, can take up as much time and effort as analyzing it. In explaining this course to a future MIS student, I…[Read more]

A data-driven service I use regularly is an app that logs my study hours. Each row could represent a week while the columns would include avg. study hours per day, study location, and how many hours left until the user reaches his or her weekly goal for hours studying.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-laws-stop-at-state-lines-but-guns-dont/
This article discusses the relationship between state gun laws and the paths traveled by firearms before being recovered by law enforcement. The analysis of the data proposes that even if a state has strict gun laws, if the neighboring states do not, the strict…[Read more]

A KPI I use on a regular basis is an app that records the amount of time I study in the tech center or library. This can help give me an idea of how I’m doing in my classes, based on how much time I spend studying. This information is also time-variant because it records both hours spent studying per day and per week.

I have never experienced any of these problems when using Excel, because I only have limited experience using it. I think the most important mistakes to avoid would be confusing the data types, because you would then have to go back and re-enter the correct data manually. However, all of these mistakes seem to have messy consequences that could…[Read more]

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/clinton-trump-hip-hop-lyrics/
This article from FiveThirtyEight discusses the changing attitude towards President Trump’s name being used in rap songs, supported by numerous infographics. The authors obtained data from the lyrics website, Genius, to analyze the trend of the 2016 presidential candidates names…[Read more]

From Hoven’s article, my take away is that the most important principle is to “be skeptical”. When looking at a data visualization, it is easy to take the information as objective facts rather than biased information. However, data is inherently biased because it is collected and presented by people with their own beliefs and objectives.…[Read more]

An example of conventional wisdom is the belief that women are more “right-brained” or creative than men. This could be tested with a sample group of both men and women where they are given a task, and brain scans reveal which parts of the brain were used the most for both gender. The findings from a study done at UPenn, where studies show that on…[Read more]