You Are A Data Person

Internal and external pressure continues to mount for college professionals to provide evidence of successful activities, programs, and services, which means that, going forward, nearly every campus professional will need to approach their work with a data-informed perspective.But you find yourself thinking “I am not a data person”.Yes, you are. Or can be with the help of Amelia Parnell.You Are a Data Person provides context for the levels at which you are currently comfortable using data, helps you identify both the areas where you should strengthen your knowledge and where you can use this knowledge in your particular university role.For example, the rising cost to deliver high-quality programs and services to students has pushed many institutions to reallocate resources to find efficiencies. Also, more institutions are intentionally connecting classroom and cocurricular learning experiences which, in some instances, requires an increased gathering of evidence that students have acquired certain skills and competencies. In addition to programs, services, and pedagogy, professionals are constantly monitoring the rates at which students are entering, remaining enrolled in, and leaving the institution, as those movements impact the institution’s financial position.From teaching professors to student affairs personnel and beyond, Parnell offers tangible examples of how professionals can make data contributions at their current and future knowledge level, and will even inspire readers to take the initiative to engage in data projects.The book includes a set of self-assessment questions and a companion set of action steps and available resources to help readers accept their identity as a data person. It also includes an annotated list of at least 20 indicators that any higher education professional can examine without sophisticated data analyses.

"The book includes a set of self-assessment questions and a companion set of action steps and available resources to help readers accept their identity as a data person. The project also includes an annotated list of at least 20 indicators that any higher education professional can examine without sophisticated data analyses"--

We are now acutely aware, as if all of the sudden, that data matters enormously to how we live. How did information come to be so integral to what we can do? How did we become people who effortlessly present our lives in social media profiles and who are meticulously recorded in state surveillance dossiers and online marketing databases? What is the story behind data coming to matter so much to who we are? In How We Became Our Data, Colin Koopman excavates early moments of our rapidly accelerating data-tracking technologies and their consequences for how we think of and express our selfhood today. Koopman explores the emergence of mass-scale record keeping systems like birth certificates and social security numbers, as well as new data techniques for categorizing personality traits, measuring intelligence, and even racializing subjects. This all culminates in what Koopman calls the “informational person” and the “informational power” we are now subject to. The recent explosion of digital technologies that are turning us into a series of algorithmic data points is shown to have a deeper and more turbulent past than we commonly think. Blending philosophy, history, political theory, and media theory in conversation with thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jürgen Habermas, and Friedrich Kittler, Koopman presents an illuminating perspective on how we have come to think of our personhood—and how we can resist its erosion.

Learn how to use R to turn raw data into insight, knowledge, and understanding. This book introduces you to R, RStudio, and the tidyverse, a collection of R packages designed to work together to make data science fast, fluent, and fun. Suitable for readers with no previous programming experience, R for Data Science is designed to get you doing data science as quickly as possible. Authors Hadley Wickham and Garrett Grolemund guide you through the steps of importing, wrangling, exploring, and modeling your data and communicating the results. You'll get a complete, big-picture understanding of the data science cycle, along with basic tools you need to manage the details. Each section of the book is paired with exercises to help you practice what you've learned along the way. You'll learn how to: Wrangle—transform your datasets into a form convenient for analysis Program—learn powerful R tools for solving data problems with greater clarity and ease Explore—examine your data, generate hypotheses, and quickly test them Model—provide a low-dimensional summary that captures true "signals" in your dataset Communicate—learn R Markdown for integrating prose, code, and results

Equal parts mail art, data visualization, and affectionate correspondence, Dear Data celebrates "the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life," in the words of Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), who introduces this charming and graphically powerful book. For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly—small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data reproduces in pinpoint detail the full year's set of cards, front and back, providing a remarkable portrait of two artists connected by their attention to the details of their lives—including complaints, distractions, phone addictions, physical contact, and desires. These details illuminate the lives of two remarkable young women and also inspire us to map our own lives, including specific suggestions on what data to draw and how. A captivating and unique book for designers, artists, correspondents, friends, and lovers everywhere.

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including relational databases, NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords? In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain the same. With this book, software engineers and architects will learn how to apply those ideas in practice, and how to make full use of data in modern applications. Peer under the hood of the systems you already use, and learn how to use and operate them more effectively Make informed decisions by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different tools Navigate the trade-offs around consistency, scalability, fault tolerance, and complexity Understand the distributed systems research upon which modern databases are built Peek behind the scenes of major online services, and learn from their architectures

The beating heart of any product or service business is returning clients. Don't let your hard-won customers vanish, taking their money with them. In Fighting Churn with Data you'll learn powerful data-driven techniques to maximize customer retention and minimize actions that cause them to stop engaging or unsubscribe altogether. Summary The beating heart of any product or service business is returning clients. Don't let your hard-won customers vanish, taking their money with them. In Fighting Churn with Data you'll learn powerful data-driven techniques to maximize customer retention and minimize actions that cause them to stop engaging or unsubscribe altogether. This hands-on guide is packed with techniques for converting raw data into measurable metrics, testing hypotheses, and presenting findings that are easily understandable to non-technical decision makers. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Keeping customers active and engaged is essential for any business that relies on recurring revenue and repeat sales. Customer turnover—or “churn”—is costly, frustrating, and preventable. By applying the techniques in this book, you can identify the warning signs of churn and learn to catch customers before they leave. About the book Fighting Churn with Data teaches developers and data scientists proven techniques for stopping churn before it happens. Packed with real-world use cases and examples, this book teaches you to convert raw data into measurable behavior metrics, calculate customer lifetime value, and improve churn forecasting with demographic data. By following Zuora Chief Data Scientist Carl Gold’s methods, you’ll reap the benefits of high customer retention. What's inside Calculating churn metrics Identifying user behavior that predicts churn Using churn reduction tactics with customer segmentation Applying churn analysis techniques to other business areas Using AI for accurate churn forecasting About the reader For readers with basic data analysis skills, including Python and SQL. About the author Carl Gold (PhD) is the Chief Data Scientist at Zuora, Inc., the industry-leading subscription management platform. Table of Contents: PART 1 - BUILDING YOUR ARSENAL 1 The world of churn 2 Measuring churn 3 Measuring customers 4 Observing renewal and churn PART 2 - WAGING THE WAR 5 Understanding churn and behavior with metrics 6 Relationships between customer behaviors 7 Segmenting customers with advanced metrics PART 3 - SPECIAL WEAPONS AND TACTICS 8 Forecasting churn 9 Forecast accuracy and machine learning 10 Churn demographics and firmographics 11 Leading the fight against churn