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

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.