“(Teaching) is an incredible opportunity to be a catalyst for what we want the future to be," says Shannon Hardy, a 21-year math and science teacher from The Exploris School, a Wake County charter school in Raleigh, NC. Ms. Hardy uses data not just as a summative measurement tool, but
What happened to the adage, "What gets measured, gets done"? Though progress is being made, there are too many child protection agencies that have yet to understand the profound impact data-informed policy and practice have on performance outcomes, as well as staff retention and satisfaction. Without dipping deep into the
John Beale was one of the highest paid government employees. A 10-year veteran of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Beale defrauded the Federal Government of nearly $1M in employment wages and fraudulent travel. Beale came under suspicion after it was noticed that the he was still being paid wages 19
Barbarians are relentless, and they are inside the gates! That didn't go well for the Romans, and they had the most advanced technologies of their day. So how do we do better against the relentless waves of cyber barbarians attacking virtually everywhere? The answer to that is analytics, which offers early
Identity fraud typically conjures thoughts of credit card scams or stolen Social Security numbers. Medical identity fraud is often overlooked, but can be a crime that kills. On the black market your medical identity can be worth as much as $50 per person versus $1 for a Social Security Number.
Identity quizzes are a hot topic among fraud fighters, and particularly so among tax administrators. A quick web search finds that a lot of state tax agencies use quizzes to fight refund fraud, including Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Even the IRS has gotten into the game. In reading the press
To prepare for the data challenges of 2015 and beyond, health care fraud, waste and abuse investigative units (government funded and commercial insurance plans, alike) need a data management infrastructure that provides access to data across programs, products and channels. This goes well beyond sorting and filtering small sets of
International Fraud Awareness Week begins on Monday, and you know what that means. Our intrepid team of fraud experts is taking over the State and Local Connection blog! Fellow bloggers, get ready. Each day next week one member of the SAS Fraud and Security Intelligence team will post on a
With a major election coming next year, I was wondering if there have been any shifts & changes in the voters in my state. This seems like an interesting opportunity for some data analysis, eh!?! To get you into the spirit of elections, here's an "I Voted" sticker from my friend
This post shares the story of a teacher and coach, and a student-athlete who was the first in his family to graduate college, attend graduate school, and aspires to become a Mathematics professor. It's the first entry in a blog series that will highlight some tremendous educators with whom I’ve
Over the last few years I’ve seen and worked on many transformational projects with big data, especially those that tap into big data’s ability to provide new and improved services for the public good. But there’s also a danger that analytics, unchecked, can do social harm by indirectly discriminating against
People encounter stress in all types of situations. Positive stress occurs when we are exposed to new situations or challenges, perhaps a new job or attending a new school – this type of stress is typically short term and is a necessary factor in healthy development. Tolerable stress results from
I hear a lot of talk about income inequality in the US ("the rich get richer..." and such) - especially as elections approach. I also see a lot of graphs, and they all seem to define their numbers slightly differently. I'm not in a position to improve the way income
New York City is a pioneer in use of technology in many ways. For instance, the work of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics has been cited repeatedly as an example of smart city innovation. But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Two projects that used SAS data visualization and data
A Vermont Department of Children Families (DCF) worker was murdered last month. The lead suspect is the mother of a child that was previously removed from her care and placed in foster care. This tragedy illustrates the challenges and risks that workers have in the field of serving at risk
Today’s Medicaid environment is drastically different from that 5, 10 or 20 years ago. Medicaid enrollment has grown to monumental heights with recent CMS numbers (April 2015) at over 70 million. As enrollment rises, concerns about efficient management of care access, cost, quality, and effectiveness have become even more prominent.
In my previous post I talked to John Cassara about the growing threat of mobile payments and how mobile phones can be used to launder illicit funds globally. I spoke with him again recently on the topic of financial intelligence. Here are the highlights from our discussion. So what is
I recently saw a cool graph showing the US import/export trade deficit. But after studying it a bit, I realized I was perceiving it wrong. Follow along in this blog, to find out what the problem was, and how I redesigned the graph to avoid it. I was looking through dadaviz.com
There's been quite a bit of controversy about the number of undocumented immigrants in the US lately - for example, Ann Coulter claims that number is 30 million, whereas others claim it's about 11 million (readers of my blog are data-savvy, and would dig into the details of such claims,
During a lighthearted moment in a serious conversation, Howard Schmidt, cyber security advisor to multiple presidents, told a Wall Street Journal interviewer that relying on a government agency as your primary backstop during a major cyber security breach is akin to calling Ghostbusters: you might not get the help you
Greece has been in the news lately, trying to secure funds to repay 1.5 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by the end of the month. And as luck would have it, there is some data available and some graphs to be created ... I love this job!
Love them or hate them, value-added models (VAMs) have changed the way we look at education today. VAMs have reshaped our thinking about the effectiveness of programs, schools, educators and colleges that prepare them. While VAMs have been used in the social sciences for decades, we can credit a few
What cities have the most and least profitable public transportation services in the US? Perhaps you can find out in this graphical visualization of the data! The US data I'm analyzing here covers things like buses, vans, and rail ... but it might be even more interesting to analyze data from
I remember when I first started in public child welfare 21 years ago and the word "outcomes" was introduced. At that time, we believed that if it felt good and children and families seemed happy that we were doing a good job - those were our outcomes. We were wrong.
In 1988 President Ronald Reagan proclaimed May as National Foster Care Month as a way to recognize foster parents for opening their homes to and caring for children in need. This annual celebration has grown to generate awareness of foster care and a recognition of all involved. The children, foster
According to Time Magazine, the next Ebola outbreak will cost the World Bank in excess of $30 billion dollars. In 2014, America spent in excess of $1.16 million dollars to treat two victims of the dreaded disease. While Ebola and other microorganisms of the deadly variety are scary creatures there
Everyone loves a “mental health” day, one of those days when we get to relax and escape from the everyday worries and stresses of life. Imagine the challenge of dealing with true mental health issues everyday – especially as a child or youth where mental health issues can cause isolation,
I was surprised to find that the size of the U.S. federal government is smaller today, than in the past many decades - let's graph it out, so it's easy to analyze... The way I got started on this little adventure was via Jishai's graph on dadaviz.com. Here's a snapshot
“What we do to our children they will do to society.” Greek philosopher Pliny the Elder said that more than 2,000 years ago, and it’s just as true today. In 2013, more than 600,000 children in the US were confirmed victims of maltreatment in the home, according to U.S. Department
I've seen a lot of recent news articles purporting income inequality in the U.S. ("the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer") ... and I wondered if the graphs were a true/unbiased representation of the data. For example, I recently saw a couple of graphs in an article on the
