Mastery Journey
Over the last month, I educated myself on the topic, Business Intelligence. I learned a lot about the terminology used across the various industries, common processes, techniques, and business applications. My experience was both rewarding and challenging at the same time.

During the weeks, I conducted research and contributed to group discussions and creative projects on Data Analytic topics associated with Patterns and Recognition. I applied the knowledge I gained from academic mentors, scholarly articles and books, and online video repositories to research projects associated with the following areas:

  • Data Mining Tools and Vendors (Review/Analysis);
  • Case Study Analysis;
  • Social Network Analysis (Facebook & Twitter);
  • Performance Patterns;
  • Trend Analysis;
  • Financial Patterns (i.e. Stocks, Income Statements, Cash Flow, Balance Sheets, etc.);
  • Investment Patterns;
  • Market Recognition; and
  • SWOT Analysis.

One of my favorite projects I worked on this past month was linked to the data associated with McCormick & Company’s historical stock information. This included leveraging the suite of functionality offered by Microsoft’s Power BI software to perform common Data Mining techniques and produce analytic insights via reports and/or visualizations.

Scholarly Book Review

Source: Silver (2015) | Image: Book Cover
Source: Silver (2015) | Image: Book Cover

In addition to my academic efforts to learn more about data analytics, I really enjoyed reading the eBook titled, The Signal and The Noise (Silver, 2015).

“A serious treatise about the craft of prediction-without academic mathematics-cheerily aimed at lay readers. Silver’s coverage is polymathic, ranging from poker and earthquakes to climate change and terrorism.”
-New York Review of Books

My favorite chapter in this book is related to prediction failures commonly associated with weather forecasts. All in all, this book provided a great overview of many applicable statistical efforts to address both the known and unknown variables/factors associated with data.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking to get into the data analytics, statistics, and/or business intelligence industry-of-practice.

References

References

Silver, N. (2015). The Signal and The Noise. Penguin Books. https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781101595954/cfi/6/16%5B;vnd.vst.idref=preface%5D!

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