Week 2 - Dae Jun Lee

As a finance and accounting major, I had no exposure to this field area and thus everything we did in class was a new learning experience.

Before entering the class, I knew big data was one of the key aspects in the fourth industrial revolution. In recent years, many experts across the globe have repeatedly reminded the society of the paradigm shift in the business world and how it will affect our future lives. This class gave me an opportunity to really explore in and outs of big data and its analysis techniques.

The very first thing I learned in the first few classes was how the technology advancement made it possible to collect and store vast amount of data. Now, companies all over the world are quickly adapting to the business environment shift and seeking for new opportunities. Such movements are seen in all companies in different frontiers, even in seemingly unrelated industries like hospitality and airline industries. It is expected that future businesses will be driven by customized data to tailor the needs of different individuals. To mention an example, W hotel now welcomes the customers who are staying in their hotels with their names displayed in the tv screens. This is a signal that they are conscientious about the individual customers data to better their services.

In the subsequent classes, I have learned to analyze data sets using different analysis software programs. As a class, we were asked to use google analytics, Tableau, and Gephi to analyze various data sets.

 It was very interesting to see how everything people did in internet can be tracked to provide information. Although I had no experience with Google Analytics, I could easily see how such tracked information can be useful especially in the advertising platform. # of visitors, how many among those visitors moved on to the next page, bounce rate, conversion rate, which channels people used to enter the web page etc. All these data are already in use!!

Using Tableau, I attempted to analyze the company operation data, but truthfully speaking, it did not work out as well as I expected. But one thing for sure is that once an individual masters the use of the program, analyzing sales data or other operation results will become incredibly easy. The program allowed to compare different dimensions in once screen and easily locate the areas where the sales were lagging or boosting. Furthermore, it even allowed to easily reorganize the generated data to carry on a further analysis. For example, the program allowed to examine to see the lagging sales region as whole was performing well in certain product lines. The best part of the program, however, was that it provided visualizations of such data in easily comprehendible methods. The Dashboard feature summarized the analysis in one screen.

Last but not least, the nightmare Gephi and I am sure I am not the only one thinking this..

But before sharing my painful memory with Gephi,, I would first like to comment on the good features of the program. Gephi in general was a great program to see the relationship among different data sets with just a few clicks in the screen. Out of the piled data, it is very difficult to see how these data sets are interrelated. Using Gephi, it was easy group the data together using moduality feature. Also, the program allowed to change the size or color of the node and edge to provide multi dimensional aspect to the analysis.

In addition, I thought that centrality measurement could prove very effective in identifying bottlenecks or the critical steps in operations

 

In summary, It truly was a learning experience for me. Although I still cannot manipulate the data as I want to using these tools, the fact that I have used it once gives me a great confidence. If there is one suggestion for the class, I would like to say that it would have been better if students were given a little more time to explore Gephi.

I remember spending most of my last night trying to figure out how to give weights to different edges in the data sets. Had I known the methods, the time could have been spent much more efficiently exploring the data.

 

In general, class was fun and enjoyable thanks to our enthusiastic professor.

I was a completely unaware of IT data management before this class, but it seems like I have taken a step forward in my IT career. Thank you.

I would also like to show gratitude to my fellow Real Madrid teammates. It was fun to work with you all and I appreciate how you all put in so much effort in completing the team projects. The final project really could not have been completed without anyone of you.