2013 – Data and Graphs

09Dec 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Amazon Prime Air — An Analytics Metaphor

I'm assuming most of us saw Jeff Bezos' announcement on Sunday about Amazon Prime Air -- an ambitious plan for Amazon to deliver packages in 30 minutes via quad copter. Sure, it may have been a PR stunt and it certainly got some good natured ribbing from the internet, but it's definitely one of those things that makes you think about business models. Think about going from next-day delivery to same-day delivery to 30-minute delivery...now all we need are the damn Heisenberg compensators and we're all set! [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="564"] Amazon Prime Air Quadcopter[/caption] From an analytics standpoint, it made me think about a concept that I repeat often -- get the data in the hands of someone who can do something about it. In Amazon's case, the goal of…

26Nov 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Building a Hadoop data pipeline – Where to start?

Uncategorized

In order to convert data into business value, the data have to be at the forefront of software projects. And you can't limit the data you're using to just the straightforward stuff in RDBMS tables. Valuable data come in structured form (RDBMS tables), but they also come in unstructured (text comments from reviews, logs), and semi-structured (XML) forms. The ability to process and harness all forms of data is crucial for turning them into business value. To have lasting value, all of this must be done in a systematic manner that can be extended, tested, and maintained. Having a data pipeline to crunch the data and distribute results to the business is vital. What is a Data Pipeline? In the general sense, a data pipeline is the process of structuring,…

04Nov 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Evidence

Uncategorized

I have been watching the dialog about the efficacy of the Course Signals results with interest. I give a tremendous amount of credit to the Course Signals team as I think they have been a positive catalyst for activity in higher ed analytics over the past 7 or so years. I also think it’s healthy to have discussions as to the validity and efficacy of results. If done in a constructive fashion, it will only further the cross-institutional learning that’s happening in our space. The reason I started Blue Canary is that I wasn't seeing enough practical implementations of analytics that produced reasonably sound evidence of positive student outcomes. Hence, this discussion about Course Signals is salient. Like the e-Literate team, I have also pointed to the Purdue project as…

05Sep 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Obligatory Moneyball Reference

Analytics, Blue Canary

Yes, many folks in the analytics space flock to “The Moneyball Reference”. It’s a great example of how data analysis seeped into the mainstream using a powerful vehicle known as Brad Pitt. The usual reference points out that Billy Beane’s analytical approach to players and statistics was counter to the decades-long logic of the established way of thinking. Furthermore, that logic led to improved success while spending fewer dollars. Call it the anti-Yankee approach. As an analyst and a lifelong baseball fan, though, there’s a more nuanced takeaway from Moneyball that I like to reference. That point is that the Moneyball approach is predicated on knowing the rules of the game. In baseball, the team with the most runs wins. Period. Here’s a (crude) video clip of the scene from…

21Jun 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

The Ins and Outs of Data

Uncategorized

I caught up with a former colleague the other day. He's also in the analytics space so we were sharing notes on the state of the industry. He made a very astute comment about analytics and I like the succinctness of what he said. We were talking about how there are a number of tech startups focusing on the analysis of the data. Hadoop and other NoSQL tools that give companies the ability to look at data, transform data, run machine learning processes on data, etc. That's not the problem, though. My colleague said, "It's all about getting the data in and moving it out. It's the ingress and the egress". Keeping the historical trickery of the word 'egress' aside, this is a great statement. I would argue that if…

13May 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Three Dimensions of Student Success

Analytics, Engagement, Learning, Progression

I like frameworks. I like them because they help align conversations. When folks talk about a topic as amorphous as analytics, a framework helps to get everyone on the same page and have them using the same language. When we talk about analytics in Higher Education, the conversation usually goes something like this: "So, you want to use analytics at your institution. What do you hope to achieve?" "Well, I want to use data and analytics to help my students succeed." "Got it. What do you mean by 'student success'?" "Well...ummm...I mean that they should...ummm. I'm not sure." So, here's the framework I use to address this conversation. It breaks student success down into three orthogonal dimensions: Progression: This is milestone-based success. Will the student pass this class? Will the…

04May 2013 by Mike Sharkey No Comments

Welcome to the Blue Canary blog

Blue Canary

Blue Canary was founded with the goal of helping institutions and businesses unlock the value that is trapped inside of their data. The goal of this blog is to share thoughts, insights, and techniques that we come across as we work with clients and refine our expertise. Some of the content might come from work we've done in the past and some might come from current work in the field. Other times, our blog posts will reflect on the state of the data & analytics space and how it relates to our values as a business. Our hope is that readers come across our postings and they find that it helps to get them closer to their goals.