Instructor

Hi, all!

The extra assignment is due tonight! Please try to submit correctly according to the instruction so that you can get the credits for the class assignments (and, for MIS major students, the professional achievement points).

Don’t forget to complete the online course evaluation for this class! You can access the ESFF site here. It only will take you five minutes, but it is essential.

Some things about the course evaluations:

• Your feedback is anonymous.
• I won’t get the results until all grades are submitted.
• Your feedback will help me improve and refine my teaching.

Thanks for your participation in our data analytics class and best wishes for your future professional and academic achievements!

Best,

Zhe Deng

Hi, all!

Time flies! Cannot believe we have reached the end of this semester! It’s time for you to show off what you have gained in the final! I just uploaded the first version of the study guide and may update it in a couple of days. Will keep you posted.

More, I plan to hold extra office hours (it’s actually a whole day!) from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on April 29th. You can also send me emails before the final if you have any questions.

We will review the assignments and ICAs tomorrow and go through the study guide.

See you then!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

Hi, all!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend! The extra credit assignment (with professional achievement points for MIS major students) has been posted on the home page (Links to an external site) of our course website. Details can be found in the instruction.

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

Hi, all!

Hope you are doing well! We will officially start the data analytics/mining part of our class using R tomorrow. You will have the choice to discover different kinds of knowledge from the data soon! Class tomorrow, therefore, will be a Very Important Class(VIC) and I will check the attendance at the beginning of our class. Please make sure you would have had R and R studio installed by then. Installation instructions can be found on our course website.

We did not complete the review of assignment 3 last time. I plan to cover the questions next week.

To help you prepare Exam 2, I plan to hold extra office hours and an extra review session one day before Exam 2. The extra office hours start from 13:00 to 15:00 on Mar. 25th. Please note that the regular office hours of our ITA, David Shen, start from 15:00 to 16:30 the same day. More, an extra review session will be held by my colleague, Siddharth Bhattacharya, who is an expert in SQL and will teach this class next Fall. He will hold the extra review session from 16:30 to 17:30 that day at Speakman hall 200. Attendance for the extra review session is optional. Hope these exam-preps could help!

Look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

Hi, all!

Hope you are doing well! We will introduce semi-structured data analysis and go through the solutions for our SQL assignment 2 and 3. These SQL coding skills will be tested in Exam 2.

Also, Assignment #4, ETL using Tableau Prep, has been posted. It is a short assignment for you to spend less than one hour to complete. Enjoy your Spring break!

See you tomorrow!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

Hi, all!

Hope you are staying safe and warm today! Grades for exam 1 have been posted. You can find details of evaluation/grading and regrade request on our syllabus here. You did a good job on exam 1! Well done! I will go through the exam questions next Tuesday.

Remember that we postponed the ICA 6 due to tonight! You can use ICA 6 as a manual to create your database, and it will not take you more than 20 min to complete it.

We will cover the Extract, Transform, Load(ETL) process tomorrow and will have a 20-min class evaluation conducted by Seth Harrington from The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning within Fox.

Look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

Hi, all!

Hi, all!

We will finally touch MySQL Workbench tomorrow! Please remember to bring your PC/MAC with MySQL workbench installed tomorrow! Assignment 2 will also be posted then. You will have one week to complete it! 

Class tomorrow will be a Very Important Class(VIC) one and I will check attendance at the beginning of the class. Look forward to seeing you all then!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng

First, data analytics is NOT a coding course!!! However, we do need the basic SQL and R skills to manipulate data.

I do know it may be your first time to touch the nerd-like syntaxes, statements, or even the ugly UI of MySQL Workbench. I had the same feelings when I was a freshman only trying to pass a C programming class several years ago.

Here are my suggestions to survive an intro-level coding class. Please take your time to review the slides/class capture and complete ICA #4. I believe the one who just knows how to master driving is the best teacher for those who sit behind the wheel for the first time.

1. Read/run the sample codes. Understand the goal of a piece of sample codes and then try to run it in the corresponding software platform (Integrated Development Environment, IDE, e.g., MySQL Workbench, RStudio, Microsoft Visual Studio, etc.) Pay attention to the code details (e.g., letter case, space, colors of words showed in a SQL query tab, etc.) The final goal is to get the very basic statements to realize the very basic requirements – maybe show “Hello, World!” on the screen (i.e., console panel);
2. Close the slides/textbooks and try to realize the basic requirements and write codes by YOURSELF. Now, you should have some sense to replicate the codes in step 1. Try to write and run them by yourself. If you cannot write them, jump to step 1 and try again;
3. Compare your codes with the sample ones. You may find minor typos or major differences. Check whether you can tell the reasons of those deviations. If you cannot, google it/sent me an email/visit office hours on Mondays and Wednesdays. If you can, congrats! You can write your codes!

After implicating these survival skills, you may find coding is not that boring. Actually, you can create your own programs. Just as people enjoy building their own Minecraft worlds, requiring creativity from players. If so, consider the following tips.

1. Codes are cold while reliable. Codes can only be executed to realize your requirements (if no errors). They will not do more than you required or change the outcomes by themselves except you trained them to do so. However, they are thus reliable. For example, if you program yourself to check conditions (such as your wallet and keychain in the left pant pocket, your mobile phone in the right pant pocket) before you execute to hang out every time, you could always have the confidence to close your apartment door without worrying about being locked out or losing contact with friends.
2. Programming as teaching a young teenager. Before starting writing your codes, think about how to reach the goal as you are teaching a young human to do so. Then try to put all the steps (or algorithm) you taught into codes. For example, if you want to write your own MAX() function used in our class, first try to think about how to teach a 3/4-year-old human to find the largest one in a basket with 12 apples. Maybe you can ask the young to grab one in hand, and then draw another from the basket to compare their sizes. Keep the larger one in hand and put the other in an empty basket. Then repeat the two steps above until he/she compare all the apples. Finally, the one in his/her hand must be the largest apple out of the 12 ones.
3. Find the beautiful parts of coding. Codes can be treated as your servant without any complaints. You can assign them to do almost endless boring repeated work. They will always be loyal to you as a developer unless you train them to be independent. You can learn almost every single languages via online resources, such as YouTube, Lynda, W3Schools, etc. You can design a beautiful and user-friendly graphical user interface(GUI)/App/MIS/Website… 

Hope these could help you get to know coding and good luck!

Best,

Zhe (Joe) Deng