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Analytics

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From Data To Decisions In Local Government, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Jul 2019

From Data To Decisions In Local Government, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Making good decisions is essential to enabling local government to deliver services that improve the lives of constituents. But what is a good decision, and what is necessary to make good decisions? In this presentation, given to fellows of the Lead for America program, I introduce the notion of decision and data analytics, specific to the needs of resource-constrained local governments, provide three examples of analytics & decision opportunities ranging from mostly-qualitative to mostly-quantitative data and analysis, and end with three case studies that I had the Lead for America fellows perform.

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Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2019

Decision Science For Community Development And Social Change, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Operations research, also known as management science or decision science, is a mathematics-based discipline that draws from engineering, information systems, management, public policy and planning. OR enables individuals and organizations to make better decisions regarding manufacturing and logistics, service provision and strategy design. My particular interest in OR focuses on the needs of mission-driven and resource-constrained organizations that serve urban communities. In my talk I will describe how OR can use qualitative and quantitative analysis through meaningful engagement of communities to enable creative identification, formulation and solution of complex problems for local impact and social justice. Specific applications I'm currently …

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Socio-Economic Planning Sciences Special Issue: Indices For The Betterment Of The Public, Vincent Charles, Ali Emrouznejad, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Oct 2018

Socio-Economic Planning Sciences Special Issue: Indices For The Betterment Of The Public, Vincent Charles, Ali Emrouznejad, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Over the years, the quest for a better society has led to the birth of a variety of composite indices of development, from the gross domestic product to the happiness index. These indices usually integrate various social, cultural, psychological, and political aspects and are considered of vital importance for evaluating a country's level of development and for assessing the impact of policy specially in public sector. Overall, they consist of numerical measures that describe the well-being of both the individual and the society as a whole. 

The Special Issue of Socio-Economic Planning Sciences encourages original research articles of high quality …

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Data Visualization: Using Tableau To Analyze Library Services And Value, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray Jul 2018

Data Visualization: Using Tableau To Analyze Library Services And Value, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray

Jennifer Murray

No abstract provided.

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Visualizing Library Data, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray Jul 2018

Visualizing Library Data, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray

Jennifer Murray

No abstract provided.

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Building Library Analytics - With A Little Help From Your Friends In Institutional Research, Jennifer L. Murray Jul 2018

Building Library Analytics - With A Little Help From Your Friends In Institutional Research, Jennifer L. Murray

Jennifer Murray

Modern ILS's produce a wealth of data, that properly blended and analyzed, would add value to the Library mission. The challenge is that while Librarians have the data and understand the mission we lack the analytics tools and skillset necessary to extract actionable intelligence. It simply isn't one of our core competencies . Fortunately college campuses do have offices that have the tools and skillsets necessary to analyze our data; Institutional Research. This presentation will explore how the University at Buffalo Libraries partnered with its campus' Institutional Research office on an analytics initiative using their visualization platform: Tableau.

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Using Tableau For Ub Library Services, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray Jul 2018

Using Tableau For Ub Library Services, Nicole Colello, Jennifer L. Murray

Jennifer Murray

No abstract provided.

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Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau Jul 2018

Emerging Trends And New Frontiers In Community Operational Research, Michael P. Johnson Jr., Gerald Midgley, George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Community operational research (Community OR), and its disciplinary relation, community-based operations research, has an increasingly high profile within multiple domains that benefit from empirical and analytic approaches to problem solving. These domains are primarily concentrated within nonprofit services and local development. However, there are many other disciplinary and application areas for which novel applications and extensions of COR could generate valuable insights. This paper identifies a number of these, distinguishing between ‘emerging trends’ (mostly in well-studied areas of operations research, management science and analytics) and ‘new frontiers’, which can be found in traditions not commonly oriented towards empirical and analytic …

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Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright Oct 2017

Improving Decision-Making Skills Of Nonprofit Professionals, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau, Jason Wright

Michael P. Johnson

Nonprofits face gaps in organizational capacity, including program design and evaluation, but previous research suggests that capacity-building exercises have a positive effect. We describe a data analytics training workshop with staff from Boston-area nonprofits reflecting a wide range of sectors. Through analysis of participant work on case studies provided by the instructor, we examine how participants made sense of training materials, the various strategies employed by participants to solve three case study problems, and participant feedback about the session. Our findings provide a basis for novel interventions in community based operations research. 

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News Verification Suite: Towards System Design To Supplement Reporters’ And Editors’ Judgements, Victoria L. Rubin May 2017

News Verification Suite: Towards System Design To Supplement Reporters’ And Editors’ Judgements, Victoria L. Rubin

Victoria Rubin

The News Verification Suite aims to provide users with a set of functions to verify information in the news. This paper offers a conceptual basis and a vision of system elements towards automated fact-checking in news production, curation, and consumption. The traditional model of journalism is compared to ‘news sharing a.s.a.p.’, highlighting similarities between journalistic criteria of excellence and LIS mandates for credibility and information quality. Potential steps for intervention with text-analytical technologies are identified – deception detection, rumor busting, satire labeling; they are nascent but feasible. Automated news verification can support and supplement news producers’ and news readers’ decision-making.

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Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Feb 2017

Community-Engaged Operations Research: Trends, New Frontiers And Opportunities, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

Scholars in multiple disciplines intersecting operations research have developed theory and applications to address the question, how can the decision sciences develop new ways to solve problems of special interest to organizations and individuals situated in geographically, economically and socially circumscribed communities? The motivation for this work is the belief that mission-driven and resource-constrained nonprofit organizations, and underrepresented, underserved, or vulnerable populations may have special needs for analytic and empirical problem-solving methods that have traditionally received less emphasis in traditional operations research and management science research and teaching. Scholarship in this area, alternatively labeled ‘community operational research’ (mostly in the …

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An Agenda For Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or/Ms/Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau Nov 2016

An Agenda For Diversity And Inclusion-Related Research Within Or/Ms/Analytics, Michael P. Johnson Jr., George Chichirau

Michael P. Johnson

Diversity and inclusion have been widely studied and debated, most often within the social sciences. What contributions can operations research, management science and analytics make to this domain of inquiry? This talk will critically examine assumptions and practices within the decision sciences that may support as well impede diversity- and inclusion-related research, and propose a research agenda that can challenge yet enrich our profession.

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Implementing Google Analytics For A Consortial Digital Repository, Greg Vogl, Yongli Zhou, Daniel C. Draper, Mark Shelstad Sep 2016

Implementing Google Analytics For A Consortial Digital Repository, Greg Vogl, Yongli Zhou, Daniel C. Draper, Mark Shelstad

Daniel Draper

No abstract provided.

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Unlocking The Potential Of Library Generated Data To Assess Value, Impact, And Influence, Margie Jantti, Brian Cox Apr 2015

Unlocking The Potential Of Library Generated Data To Assess Value, Impact, And Influence, Margie Jantti, Brian Cox

Margie Jantti

The University of Wollongong Library (UWL) has initiated an innovative and collaborative research project to unambiguously demonstrate the value that can be provided by academic libraries. The project centres on the integration and interrogation of a series of discrete datasets, e.g. student performance, student attrition, student demographic data, and borrowing and electronic resources usage data. The project has enabled UWL to identify whether a correlation exists between usage of Library resources and academic performance (e.g. grades). Findings reveal a strong and sustained correlation; providing a new facet through which to view and understand the student academic experience.The project is different …

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Data, Analytics And Community-Based Organizations: Transforming Data To Decisions For Community Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr. Dec 2014

Data, Analytics And Community-Based Organizations: Transforming Data To Decisions For Community Development, Michael P. Johnson Jr.

Michael P. Johnson

The past ten years have seen a revolution in two disciplines related to operations and strategy design. “Big Data” has transformed the theory and practice of producing and selling goods and services through methods associated with computer science and information technology. “Analytics” has popularized primarily quantitative models and methods by which organizations and systems can measure multiple aspects of performance. As these fields rely on information technology to collect, store, process and share data, we refer to the collection of knowledge and applications associated with Big Data and analytics as “data analytics and information technology.” The impacts of data analytics …

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