[Music]
so when we're plotting our points in
life either as new parents new graduates
newlyweds we always think that path is
very clear and pretty straight but we
know better we know that it's windy and
a little confusing and more like a
journey and an adventure what we're
doing is having experiences that
culminate into the next great thing so
when I've completed my undergrad degree
in math this is how I felt I was
searching for jobs with the title
analytics in it because I knew I wanted
to work with math but I wasn't in the
applied math position those first few
jobs in analytics were really putting
numbers into spreadsheets and then doing
brace yourself really simple formulas in
Excel adding up numbers across the row
and columns the people were great the
companies were nice it just wasn't the
right fit so I kept looking for work and
eventually landed in higher education
now in higher education the process of
onboarding me and getting me started
into work was slightly different here
they had me sit in on meetings learning
about business processes business
processes like how a student would
enroll into a class and how we would
count that enrollment and then I would
sit in meetings learning how to take
that information out of the system that
big black box and put it into a pretty
PDF and send out so that people could
see how many people were enrolled it was
fine it was again good work but I got a
degree in math math to me is is
beautiful take this agave plant from
Tucson where I live it represents to me
a fractal a fractal is a geometric scuse
me
geometry shape that repeats itself and I
know it's not a perfect fractal so I
don't want my undergrad advisor to come
yelling at me but it's still beautiful
math is also certain two plus two equals
four every day it never changes this is
what I love about math so here I am
putting information into spreadsheets no
big deal and again like I said it worked
it wasn't until our system went through
in a complete conversion that it had a
difference in perspective and when I say
a system conversion I'm talking about a
legacy mainframe to a PeopleSoft system
and if you don't know what that means
it's essentially switching from like
Samsung to iPhone or back and forth it's
a completely different way of pulling
out your data out of this big black box
I didn't get drugged into a ton of
meetings cuz I had only been there a
couple years but I did know enough about
critical information that needed to be
reported to the state and federal
government so in our staff meetings we
would talk about how we're going to
report in this new world one of the
critical pieces of information in higher
education is whether or not a student is
a new first-year student freshman if you
will we didn't have a way of recording
this or reporting this in the new system
just yet so somebody had to spend the
time figuring out how to identify these
students I was ready for a new challenge
let's try this out so I approached my
boss and mentor and asked if I could
give it a go and she said go for it so I
met with my colleagues Bob and Harry and
asked them questions
how does this work in the old system how
do you think it's gonna work in the new
system
I spent time face to face with these
people really trying to understand how
the data worked and get that knowledge
from them in a way it was collecting
data myself in a different way then I
had to meet with different departments
because every department also cared
about how this data went into this big
black box or they cared about how it
came out so what I learned in this
portion of data analysis path is that I
had to spend time with people to really
understand the data process next I had
to spend time with the data itself
because as much as I'd love to say that
data goes into a system and it comes out
perfect every time that's
not true there's tons of errors and
quirks and exceptions and timing
differences so I had to spend time with
the data to really understand how it
works
so now let's talk about bias this little
boy is my seven-year-old son he has what
I like to call condiment bias
he has never tried mayonnaise but if he
has to put it on a knife and put it on a
sandwich to help me make lunches for the
week for his dad he holds it as far away
as he possibly can
he's never tried mayonnaise my daughter
on the other hand will only eat ketchup
she has a ketchup bias so the bias that
I brought whenever I was doing data
analysis for a couple the first is that
if something happened in a prior report
in the prior term in the prior year even
the prior week I would assume that I
already analyzed why that happened I'm
not gonna worry about it anymore and
moving on you make a lot of mistakes you
miss a lot of crucial evidence when you
do that the second thing is when I was a
newer analyst especially I was raised to
make yourself irreplaceable the only way
you're gonna keep a job especially in
that job climate that I was in was if
you couldn't be replaced my perception
was that if I looked like I could move
fast do a lot quickly and I knew what I
was talking about even though I didn't I
would not be replaced so when I needed
to spend time face to face with people
and ask questions I was very hesitant I
kept to myself or I did as much research
as I could on my own when all that
knowledge was in the cube right next to
me but I didn't want to look like I
could be replaced
I also made really dumb mistakes because
I was rushing through processes and
reports dumb mistakes like using a
greater than instead of a greater than
or equal to but some people may say so
what well it costs us time the company
time me time other people's time trying
to fix this error trying to explain the
same
and it costs a little bit of your
reputation rushing through and instead
of spending ten more minutes on this
side cost me three more hours on this
side and a little bit of trust so after
you know seven eight years and data
analysis I started learning new patterns
learning new things to try based on what
I'd learned from other people and from
my own experiences so instead of just
diving into a project I take a 30,000
foot view I bother people I look at the
data and I ask questions I look for
patterns and then I start slicing and
dicing so it's at this point in my
career that I thought I had a pretty
clear path I know what's going on I know
where I'm going and I'm pretty good at
this data analysis thing well two years
ago my husband received this
unbelievable offer and my family and I
picked up and moved from Columbus Ohio
to Tucson Arizona it was a big change
but it was an exciting change and we
said to ourselves you know what if we're
gonna do this we're gonna lay the chips
down where we want I wanted to go back
to grad school so why not I'll go back
to grad school I'll work part-time as an
analyst well I was going from full-time
worker and parent and juggling a family
and home to working part-time from home
it's very different it's good but it's
different also a full-time student in an
online program and still a parent and
mom oh and our family and friends were
all 1,700 miles away in Pennsylvania
Ohio oh and I was going into a different
field completely I was going into a
master of learning technologies program
something that had always been a passion
of mine but I just didn't make the time
for my first semester in this master of
long learning technologies program I got
to work with some excellent people the
way that we introduced and met each
other was a little
fun though it was through group work
everybody loves group work we did a
project on evaluating learning
management tool we formed team tank
which is Tim Nunn myself
Natalie Gunter and Karen North and when
our project was completed we spoke with
dr. ana paula crea who was our professor
for the class and she suggested that we
present our project at a conference well
I had never been to a conference let
alone presented at one but this sounded
like okay if they're gonna be with me I
can do this I immediately became a
conference junky I wanted to attend and
present and just be a part of this I
wanted to gather data and it be face to
face with more people I wanted to learn
more experiences and then I wanted to
share what I had to say because after
you present people come up to you
because they have questions and they
want to know it's exciting at that same
conference I met a lady named Katie
Stroud Katie Stroud likes to talk about
the power of story and like any human
being when I heard her information I
related it to myself and I thought
that's what a data analyst is really
you're taking information from this big
black box and you're telling a story
with it based on a question you may be
asked or something that you want to
share
I also learned at these conferences and
in this new world that instructional
designers teachers and educators really
don't have a lot of information or data
when they're trying to make an
assessment of the success of their class
or a tool they're trying to implement or
the teacher themselves they really have
a hard time measuring that qualitative
data I really began to appreciate the
fact that I had these massive data
points in my comfort zone job and then I
started thinking that maybe data
analysis is something that we should all
start to embrace we should all start to
try and figure out where we can pull
this information from at another
conference that was more academic based
I met a lot of graduate students and
professors that were presenting on their
research remember that I'm new to the
world of graduate school so when I would
listen to their presentation afterwards
I would say things like how it's
wonderful so what's next what are you
gonna do with this
everybody's response was to get
published and I thought well that that's
awesome let's do this get published
thing but what else are you going to do
with it what problem are you trying to
solve who are you trying to help what
are you going to look into next and I
realized I was coming across a bit of a
aggressive and backed off and just
stopped asking and started listening one
presentation by a dr. Thomas Reeves
started talking about a rift between
educational practice and academic
research the teachers feel like
researchers aren't looking into the
things that they need or sharing
information with them and then
researchers feel like they provide all
this information and do all this
research but it's not applied and that's
when I realized that I have a different
perspective I'd been a data analyst all
this time and these pressures from
graduate school are completely different
and I thought again there's a gap here
this is data analysis this is one system
in one system and nothing's happening in
between this is where I started to think
there's purpose in data analysis to
bring these two people together to bring
these groups together to find a way to
share the information so when you think
about data analysis think about spending
time with people think about asking
questions thinking about lifting the
heavy rock before the presentation look
underneath things really appreciate the
time that can be spent and the data
that's out there data analysis is as
much an art as it is a science anyone
from any background can really
appreciate its beauty
and anyone from any background can
really appreciate the power it can bring
to our relationships thank you
[Applause]