MIS 0855: Data Science Fall 2016

Section 006, Instructor: Shana Pote

Weekly Question #6: Complete by October 19, 2016

Leave your response as a comment on this post by the beginning of class on October 19, 2016. Remember, it only needs to be three or four sentences. For these weekly questions, I’m mainly interested in your opinions, not so much particular “facts” from the class!

Answer one of these:

We spent a little time in class discussing the article Stupid Data Corruption Tricks.

  1. Have you ever made one of the mistakes listed in the article? Describe what happened.
  2. If you haven’t made one of those mistakes, which one of them do you think is the most important to avoid?

Video Walkthrough of Assignment #2 Solution

A link to a WebEx video walking through the solution to Assignment 2 has been posted to the Class Captures page. It’s about 20 minutes long, and walks you through the answers, graphs, tips on how to build them, and how to derive the answers from them. It’s all there for you to see!

It may ask you to install a WebEx plug-in to view the video, go ahead and do that. 
As always, if you have questions unanswered after viewing the video, email me and we’ll schedule office hours to review.

Reading Quiz #6: Complete by October 17, 2016

Some quick instructions:

  • You must complete the quiz by the start of class on October 17, 2016.
  • When you click on the link, you may see a Google sign in screen. Use your AccessNet ID and password to sign in. It will then take you to the quiz.
    If it says you don’t have access, make sure you’re signed out of your regular Gmail (non-TUMail) account!
  • You can only do the quiz once. If you submit multiple times, I’ll only use the first (oldest) one.
  • This is “open book” – you can use the articles to answer the questions – but do not get help from anyone else.

Ready? Take the quiz by clicking this link.

Assignment 3: Cleaning a Data Set

Assignment 3 is due before class (7:59am) on Friday, October 21, 2016. Here are the instructions (in Word)   (and as a PDF).  Make sure you read them carefully!  This is an assignment that should be done individually.

And here is the data file you’ll need: VandelayOrders(Jan).xlsx.

When your assignment is complete, you’re going to email both files (answer sheet in .docx or .pdf format, and cleaned .xls file) to me at MIS0855.1ptopenatj1r90sy@u.box.com from your Temple email account. If your upload is successful, you’ll receive a confirmation receipt via email from the Temple OwlBox system. SAVE THIS RECEIPT! It is your proof that your submission was submitted, the name of the document, and the time/date of submission.

If you don’t receive a confirmation email, it likely means your submission was not successful. Try again, and contact me if you’re having recurrent issues.

 

Assignment 4: Data Visualization (Temple Analytics Challenge)

Here is the assignment.   It is due by midnight on October 28, 2016. Start early!

When your assignment is complete, you’re going to email both .PDF files to me at MIS0855.1ptopenatj1r90sy@u.box.com from your Temple email account. If your upload is successful, you’ll receive a confirmation receipt via email from the Temple OwlBox system. SAVE THIS RECEIPT! It is your proof that your submission was submitted, the name of the document, and the time/date of submission.

If you don’t receive a confirmation email, it likely means your submission was not successful. Try again, and contact me if you’re having recurrent issues.

Want extra credit? Enter your deliverable in the Temple Analytics Challenge! You don’t need to do anything more to the assignment except submit it to the competition and you could win up to $2,500!

Video Walkthrough of ICA 4.2 – Getting Familiar with Tableau

Class,

I’ve uploaded a video walkthrough of the first Tableau in-class activity that was started last Friday. Because it’s so integral to becoming acquainted with Tableau, and many elements are used in Assignment #2, I want to make sure you have this activity completed and can build on for the remainder of the course.

There are tips in the video that are not covered in the activity worksheet, things we’ll cover later in the course in depth. For instance, the order that you put measures into the row shelf will define how the data is sorted on screen. Or, how to convert a scatterplot or bar chart into a line graph. I’ve had a few questions about how to do the line chart, and I demonstrate how to do that at 17:30-20:00.

If you have any difficulty viewing the video, please contact me ASAP. Else, enjoy and I hope you find this useful.

EDITED TO ADD: you’ll find the video under the Class Capture page.

Hypotheses points on Assignment #1

As mentioned in class today, if you had points deducted from Assignment #1 because you didn’t meet the basic scenario requirements, (you will know this from my additional note at the top of your evaluation sheet), you may earn half those points back by submitting, to my Owlbox (MIS0855.1ptopenatj1r90sy@u.box.com) the following by 7:59am Friday, September 30th, 2016:

  1. Revised hypotheses clearly comparing Philadelphia to another US location (another city, state, region, or national comparison is fine, but it must be specifically stated in each hypothesis). You must also still meet requirements for testability and falsifiability.
  2. Revised rationales for each new hypothesis, answering the question “Why might this condition I’m testing for be true?”
  3. Two specific pieces of data you would look for to test each new hypothesis. You are not required to find a dataset containing the pieces of data you specify, but I want you to list what you would look for to support the tests.

So, for instance:

Original hypothesis: Philadelphia is a safer city. (Not testable. How do you test for “safe”, and where are you comparing it to?)

Revised hypothesis: Philadelphia had fewer incidences of robberies at gunpoint than New York City, per 1000 residents, in year 2015.

Rationale – needs to answer the question why NYC might have more robberies at gunpoint, or why Philadelphia might have fewer, thus could include rationales like: Philadelphia residents don’t stay out as late as NYC residents do, so aren’t on the streets to be robbed. OR, Philadelphia makes it harder to buy a gun than NYC. OR, Philadelphia has a better staffed police department and presence on the streets to deter robberies at gunpoint.

Two pieces of data to test the hypotheses could be:

  1. Ratio of robberies at gunpoint to residents in NYC
  2. Ratio of robberies at gunpoint to residents in Philadelphia

Or, you can cite the data you’d use to figure out the ratio (you’re not restricted to two pieces of data, can have more, just not less):

  1. # of residents in NYC in 2015
  2. # of robberies at gunpoint in NYC in 2015
  3. # of residents in PHL in 2015
  4. # of robberies at gunpoint in PHL in 2015

If you have further questions, do email me. If you have questions about any other part of your Assignment #1 evaluation, please email me those as well.

Professor Pote

Weekly Question #5: Complete by October 12, 2016

Leave your response as a comment on this post by the beginning of class on October 12, 2016. Remember, it only needs to be three or four sentences. For these weekly questions, I’m mainly interested in your opinions, not so much particular “facts” from the class!

Here is the question:

Just like you did about a month ago, find another online article dated within last two weeks from a credible source that has something to do with data and is interesting and relevant to you. Copy and paste the URL directly into your response followed by a few sentences that explain what is interesting about it.

Office Hours

Shana Pote (instructor)
By Appointment Only! Email to schedule time between 6-10 pm, M-F, or 9-12 S-S. Office hours will be via Google Hangout, Skype or WebEx
Email shana.pote@temple.edu to set up appointment.

ITA information

Craig Kestecher (ITA)
Office hours/tutoring, by appointment only.
Email: tuf94617@temple.edu