Exceptional Student Blogs
Blogs for Nerds
Data Translators: Bridging the Gap Between Data Scientists and Executive Decision-Makers
By Aspen Runkel Leveraging Data-Enabled Insights for Competitive Advantage Times have changed. We now live in a digital world allowing for seemingly endless opportunities to leverage data for competitive advantage. Andrei Hagiu, professor of information systems at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and Julian Wright, professor of economics at the National University of Singapore,…
Behind the Lens: The Porn Industry’s Use Of Data Analytics and Technology
By: Alistair Bernhard Pornography has become a cultural norm in our society, with recent statistics showing that 68% of men and 32% of women watch it daily.[1] In 2019, the website Pornhub was visited 42 billion times, with a 115 million visits a day. There was so much pornography uploaded to Pornhub in 2019 that…
A Brief Exploration of the Looming “Trough of Disillusionment” of Artificial Intelligence
By: Alexis Campestre –March 14, 2020 There have been a total of four confirmed deaths as a result of Tesla’s autopiloting system in their autonomous vehicles, meanwhile TSLA stock skyrockets. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimates that “artificial intelligence technologies could increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion, a full 14%, by 2030.”[1] It is almost impossible not to feel…
The Fitbit Flu
By: Ross Stokes In modern day society, mankind is faced with an infinite array of threats—threats such as: global warming, super volcanoes, and terrorist groups. There is one threat in particular that the general public tends to discount. That threat is none other than the influenza virus. Microsoft founder Bill Gates claims a deadly influenza…
Asking the Right Questions to Find and Fixing the Root Cause of a Problem
By: Brenna Hoffman Most people in the world have experienced the incessant questions that a toddler asks: Why is the sky blue? Why do I have to go to bed? Why is that man naked? From the time they wake up to the time they go to bed, toddlers are obsessed with asking “why” for…
Useless Data or Useless System: How Courts Use Data
By: Taylor Toepke “Court is about right and wrong. It is not about feelings, emotions, and the details of relationships. The court system with its restrictions on time, has little tolerance for listening to the endless minutia between two divorcing spouses”, stated by Denise Poisson, a Marriage and Family Psychotherapist from California. Usually when we…
Blockchain: The Cure for What Ails the Music Industry?
By: Michael Schwartz Since the music industry ventured forth into the digital age, and as streaming services have exploded in popularity, accountability for copyright attribution and royalty allocation has become truly murky. Music creators are constantly fighting for equitable distribution of ownership rights and payment for work product, as well as pushing for increased accuracy…
Data-enabled Network Effects Have Killed Competition in Tech
By: Jordan McNea For over a century the United States has debated what constitutes noncompetitive practices and who should be considered a monopoly. Even as the monopolized industries that first caused antitrust laws to be written have died out and newer industries have surfaced, many of the original talking points haven’t changed. As far back…
The Intersection of AI & Religion
By: Kathryn Puczkowskyj In the past ten years, Big Data and artificial intelligence (AI) have seen rapid progression not only in technological complexity, but in how deeply embedded they are in the average person’s daily life. Most use cases revolve around science or business. However, AI has increasing implications for religious organizations. This writing will…
What is Conversational AI?
By: Austin Bankston So, what is conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI)? According to Georgian Partners, conversational AI refers to the use of messaging apps, speech-based assistants and chatbots to automate communication and create personalized customer experiences at scale (Brenier & Pria, 2019). Smart speakers, such as Alexa, Cortana, Siri, and Google Home, are stimulating the conversation…
A New Way to “Watch” the Debates: Analyzing Text to Discern Candidate Positioning on Key Issues
By: Sarah Thompson I started off strong this election. I watched the first three Democratic presidential debates from start to finish in a state of elation as discussion topics miraculously contained words like “climate change” and “renewable energy.” My people, they were back. The future was looking pretty bright. Fast-forward to November and I hardly…
The Rise of Continuous Intelligence
By Apsara Rodriguez March 2020 Investing in machine learning and AI is becoming increasingly necessary to stay competitive in the modern marketplace. To keep up with consumer demand, it is now vital for businesses to manage the flow of data. This can be achieved by staying up to date with data analysis strategies. Recent advancements…
Modern Rights – Data Agency
By: Alexis Campestre Throughout human history there has been a battle for information in every domain of human interaction, whether on the literal battlefield, or pricing risk in the insurance markets. The better insight information provides, the better decisions that are made. It was during the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, in which…
Tableau vs. Power BI
By Apsara Rodriguez Data analytics is the science of analyzing raw data in order to extract valuable insights and use those insights in making smart business decisions. Data is often combined with machine learning to create predictive analytics for other analytics processes that bring the value of the information to light (Conrad, 2019). In the…
How does Edge Computing Impact Businesses?
By Austin Bankston Edge computing is transforming the way data is being handled, processed, and delivered from millions of devices around the world. Gartner defines edge computing as “a part of a distributed computing topology in which information processing is located close to the edge – where things and people produce or consume that information”…
Transparent and Seamless Healthcare Data: Can We Achieve It in Montana?
By: Kathryn Puczkowskyj Imagine a day when all of your health information is fully integrated. Your history – each doctor’s visit, test, lab, or physical complaint – is stored in one location where any healthcare provider you see has access to it. You are saving money on testing, and your doctor is not limited to…
What People Get Wrong About Coronavirus Data
By Jordan McNea As the novel strain of coronavirus, Covid-19, has put half the world under some sort of lockdown[1], infected over a million people, and caused financial ruin, people in power have grossly misrepresented the data provided by epidemiologists and data scientists every step of the way. Whether through malicious intent or pure ignorance,…
Data Science and Healthcare During the Covid-19 Pandemic
By: Sarah Thompson Covid-19 has altered our world immensely – casting a net of uncertainty that holds us in a state of eerie permanence. Cradled in captivity, many of us are waiting for the world to return to normal, occupying ourselves in the meantime by organizing our closets or sewing N95 masks for local…
Computational Creativity: An Exploration of Algorithmic Composition
In a recent Inc. Magazine article, John Rampton touted the benefits of playing music, claiming of all things, that doing so helps your brain “more than any other activity.” According to various studies that scanned the brains of musicians and non-musicians alike, the corpus callosum—a large bundle of fibrous nerves connecting both sides of the…
Judgment Time: An Analysis of the Department of Child and Family Services Algorithms
By: Taylor Toepke At 3:50 p.m. on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving 2016, Timothy Byrne, a call screener at Pittsburgh’s hotline for child abuse and neglect, decided to key in “Low risk” and “No safety threat” when selecting the likely threat to a child’s immediate safety. This happened after a student told a preschool teacher that…
Data = Dystopia: China’s Social Credit System
By: Alistair Bernhard When one thinks of data, one tends to think about all the innovation and advancement it has created. Banks can study client’s data to make more informed decisions and reduce the risk of losing their money. Small businesses can use the tools of large corporations and have a fighting chance to prosper…
Augmented Reality: A New Tool in the Data Scientist’s Toolkit
By: Brenna Hoffman In the summer of 2016, millions of players in the United States and around the world were infatuated with one game. This game was called Pokemon Go, a game where the real world mixed with the virtual world and players walked around the world with their nose in a phone trying to…
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