Blog V | Summary and Reflection

Looking back on this course, I am very thankful to have learned the things that I got to learn, as difficult as some materials were to understand and as difficult as some assignments were, all the materials/readings/assignments will definitely help me in my career. It made it easier to do the assignments based on how the course were structured.

In this blog I will summarize each module and then reflect on them based on what I have learned throughout the course.

Module---0 Course Introduction

• Lecture 1: Course Overview

• Lecture 2: Introduction to Big Data and Business

Summary:

This module was about Big data and Business Intelligence. The lectures/materials discussed the difference between internal and external data. Data has grown over the years that the volume, variety and velocity of data is growing fast. People are using the web it is easier to collect and store data, the need for sampling is gone because now there are populations of data to work with which makes sampling error almost nonexistent. Business Intelligence comes in the picture when deal with Big Data and BI is tools, applications, programing that allows for gathering, storing, cleaning and understanding data. It allows business to make decisions and solve issues. An interesting material that caught my attention this week was regarding one of the articles "Why Big Companies Are Investing in Service That Listens to Phone Calls" discusses how some companies are making technologies that will allow them to listen to peoples phone calls. They are saying that the benefit of this would be that they will be able to gather information and then provide solutions or assistances to people if they need them. 

Reflection:

I did not understand a lot about BI and didn't know anything about Big Data, before joining this course. I do feel like I have a better understanding now and know how huge of an impact Big Data has on the world and how every company, government agencies and education are using it to better themselves and thrive with it. Big Data is exciting and it is the future, I have also learned that it brings with it a lot of problems (user privacy).

Module---1 Data Warehouse Design and Implementation

• Lecture 3: Data Warehouse Design Cycle

• Lecture 4: Introduction to Balanced Scorecard

• Lecture 5: Dimensional Modeling Star Schema

• Lecture 6: Advanced Star Schema Design

• Lecture 7: Data Quality Analysis

• Lecture 8: Dashboard Design and its  use Analytics

Summary:

This module discussed Data Warehouse Design. In this week, the focus was on understanding data warehouse design and data mart design. There two major organizational informations are Online Transaction Processing or OLTP and Online Analytical Processing or OLAP. OLTP is for business operation databases and OLAP contain current and historical data. The lectures/materials also discussed the Balanced Scorecard. It has has four perspectives and combined together make performance management framework. They are "financial perspective", "customer perspective", "internal business process perspective" and "learning and growth perspective". The readings for this week were very interesting. The "How Southwest Airlines Developed its Balanced Scorecard Analysis" reading discussed how Southwest used the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard to improve how they do their business. It is interesting that other airlines are not utilizing the balanced scorecard the way Southwest is, especially since Southwest had such a success with it.  

We also learned about Start Schema design for a data warehouse in this module. This week introduced a lot of terminology such as surrogate and primary keys. Surrogate keys are sequential numbers and they are used to join dimension tables with the fact table and that they never change. The most important subject that stood out to me was the four step dimensional design process. 

This module also discussed dashboards and how to analyze these types of dashboards. The dashboard is a visual representation of a company's performance, the dashboard is also in one screen.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed learning about OLTP and OLAP, I didn't know about them before this week and applying the knowledge that i gained from the material and to the assignment really helped me better understand them. I also really found the Balanced Scorecard really interesting, I wish more companies would utilize it. The readings did discuss a few companies that have applied and it how it has really helped them because overall, the customers were happier and so were the staff. 

I really enjoyed this weeks materials learning more about the Star Schema Design was really interesting and helped a lot with the assignment. I had never created a Star Schema Design before this class and learning about its benefits and how to create one was helpful. The steps for creating one was a little hard to understand at first but understanding it well made doing the assignment a lot easier. I also did not know that dimension tables have a surrogate keys and primary keys. I also knew that data quality is important but knowing that having good quality data allowed for repurposing something other than the original purpose really showed the importances of having good data. I know that this material will be very useful in my field. I have already mentioned the readings and materials to my workplace and they are interested in it. I am happy that I got to learn Tableau. I know where I work Tableau is used a lot so having the opportunity to have worked with it will be beneficially to my career. It was not too difficult to work with Tableau I am not sure why I was afraid of using it at first. 

"Common Pitfalls in Dashboard Design" reading helped with designing the visualizations and then the dashboard at the end. Without the materials it would have been very difficult to do the assignment. It is so easy to do a visualization incorrectly. This reading was the most helpful and was very easy to read.  

Module---2 Web Analysis

• Lecture 9: Introduction to Web Analytics

• Lecture 10: Google Analytics

Summary:

This week I learned about Web analytics. It is all about gathering data about people that visit a website. The data can include everything that the individual does on the site, it can collect all that information. After that understanding exactly what they are doing on that site is important in order to help improve the design of the website. This week taught me the five W's of web analytics. The "what" is referring to actions that are being performed on the website. The "who" is for who the audience of the website is. The "when" is the time, when are people visiting the site. The "where" is for where the people are coming from, and the "why" is for the reason they are coming to the site, so why are they visiting the site.

Google Analytics was a very useful and interesting information to learn. Google Analytics lets you create all sorts of reports some of which are standard reports and it also lets you create custom reports if you want to or need to. It lets you include whatever data or information you want in these reports. 

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this weeks materials. I have been wanting to learn more about Google analytics for a long time, and I had the chance to understand it better. The most important thing I learned during the first lecture was that web analytics means the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of internet data for the purpose of understanding and optimizing web usage. Reporting is key to Google Analytics.The best way to understand how a website is doing is by reporting on it. There are so many options to analyze the data to better understand how the website is doing. I had a lot of fun playing with the metrics and the reporting options. It helped me understand what types of users use the website and how they use the site. I have tried learning more about Google Analytics after this week, my workplace is really interested in wanted to use this and I know knowing more about Google Analytics will be beneficial in my field.

Module --- 3 Social Media Analytics, Data Visualization and Network Analysis 

• Lecture 11: Introduction to Networks

• Lecture 12: Introduction to Network Visualization

• Lecture 13: Network Properties

• Lecture 14: Visualizing and Analyzing Networks using GEPHI

• Lecture 15: Network Analysis Examples

• Lecture 16: Course Summary

Summary:

This week was about networks. Network is a collection of entities with relationships among them. The vertices in a network represent entities in a system. Edges present relationships between nodes and vertices.

Network Properties lecture discussed the different mathematical properties that help with understanding the structure of a network. Degree centrality was the most important and interesting to me. I ended up using it in the assignment and really believe it is important to a network  has directed network and directed network. Undirected network there is only one kind degree centrality measure. In a directed network there are two kinds of degree centrality measures, the in-degree centrality and the out-degree centrality.

I also learned how networks can be used for analysis. Gephi can be used to analysis the data in the networks. Two famous companies, apple and google, networks were analyzed by looking at their patent networks. It was interesting to see Apple’s network looks like there is a core of inventors in the middle.  Google’s network seems more dispersed with inventors spread over.

Reflection:

I really enjoyed this weeks materials. I did not much about "networks" I had no idea how they worked and what exactly a network is. I appreciated how detailed the lectures were in explaining what exactly it is and how it works. It was still challenging for me to grasp this weeks material, mostly because this material is so new to me, but I am happy that I know more now then I did before this week. My favorite reading was definitely "Explore Your LinkedIn Network Visually in Maps". It was interesting to read what others thought of the InMap, and how they used it. Overall, this week taught me something new and I am happy that now I can apply the material and knowledge to my professional life. 

I am looking forward to using the skills I learned in MIS 587 for future success. I learned more than I ever thought I would have. I liked the structure of the course, it made navigating a lot easier.