Over the last few years, several web design trends have exploded in popularity and different frameworks and libraries have emerged to support them. It’s been close to a decade since the term ‘responsive’ became mainstream and changed our way of thinking about the structure of our applications across devices. Since that time other design philosophies have followed as we sought...
There are two main philosophies that have become prominent over the past several decades with information management pioneered by Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. Nagesh & Cody (2005) provide an overview of these contrasting approaches, which are vastly different with their own merits and downsides. Inmon believes in building a large centralized enterprise-wide data warehouse using a relational...
AWS offers an immense array of features for deploying and managing complex sites. There are however a lot of use cases where you want to quickly setup an easy to use pipeline for deploying static websites (without a build process). I am going to cover how to get started using AWS to setup a basic no-frills web server using an easy-to-use deployment setup via AWS code repository and deployment...
We are going to cover some of the most commonly used properties and methods in JavaScript, for working with arrays. There are a lot of other methods which are not covered here, including newer ES6 methods. The goal here is to get you started working with arrays and gaining an understanding of the fundamental ways we can access and manipulate data. The table below summarizes the various methods we...
Earlier we looked at datatypes and variables. Arrays take the concept of a variable or binding one step further and allow us to form groups of values within a data structure, which we can then manage in our code. A good use for an array is a list of data. Arrays not only let you group data, but they offer a range of tools or methods to update and manipulate their contents. They are used commonly...
Scope determines what variables or bindings are available to JavaScript within its current context. For example, if a variable is defined outside of any functions within your code (often referred to as the main call stack), these variables are available to all other code embedded within other blocks and functions. Variables defined in main are often referred to as ‘Global Variables‘...
In earlier lessons, we wrote code without using any functions. Now that you have been introduced to the various ways we can organize our code within function declarations and expressions, it is helpful to step back for a moment to understand the flow of execution within our code. JavaScript uses a call stack to in order to manage this flow, which is essentially a data structure (or to-do list)...
Functions are repeatable blocks of code. They are fundamental to most programming languages and allow you to build applications with reusable code that can be called with different arguments. The best way to explain functions is through an example. Suppose you wanted a quick way to calculate how much your bill would be with tip (assume for this example the bill amount includes tax). → Try it...
Often in programming, we need to carry out similar instructions a number of different times. Loops help reduce redundant code and let you quickly offload repetitive tasks to the computer. In JavaScript there are several types of loops. In this lesson we are going to examine while, do while, and for loops. While and Do While loops As their names suggest, while and do while loops carry out a number...
Watson Analytics provides a powerful suite of display and rapid reporting options. This article looks at two distinct datasets from Kaggle, Laptop Price and Mobile Price Classification. By using the display options available within Watson Analytics, the ability to create a compelling story possible. Both sets of analysis are focused around the target variable of price (or price_range), and the...
A while ago I wrote an article called Using jQuery.AJAX() to Retrieve Sample JSON Data. Since this time I’ve been slowly using more and more native JavaScript to get things done, so I thought it was time to revisit this concept using the fetch() API. It has been very convenient over the years to use jQuery to simplify tasks that otherwise would have been more challenging to write in native...
This article focuses on two different predictive models built from two different data sources from Kaggle, Laptop Price and Mobile Price Classification. Laptop Price consists of records of various laptop models, which was last updated six months ago from writing, adding additional laptop characteristics and prices. Mobile Price Classification provides data on mobile phones including price range...
Conditional statements (commonly called if statements) provide a way for JavaScript to make decisions and run specified code based on a set of criteria. In JavaScript, the criteria or condition is surrounded in parenthesis and the resulting code to run is contained in a block. Up until now, we have been examining single line statements. In JavaScript, a block of code is surrounded by curly braces...
Watson Analytics provides a suite of analytics tools that are easy to use for non-technical people. The software opens the door for data preparation and exploration for managers and other personnel who would benefit from analysis but don’t necessarily have the advanced analytical background. This article details the analysis of a dataset called Laptop Prices, sourced from Kaggle. The...
Quick overview of basic JavaScript Operators including math, comparison, compound, and incremental/decremental.
Introduction to JavaScript with an overview of data types, values and variables.
There are more ways to access data through a large amount of software tools than there has ever been in the history of analytics. We have access to a wealth of information that, if used properly, can help drive decisions and bring about success within organizations. Why then are so many top-level executive decisions driven by intuition and gut feel? There have been countless examples over the...
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has launched several programs over the years with the goal of improving healthcare in the United States. The Transforming Clinical Practices Initiative (TCPI) is one of these programs, that was built to support clinician practices through peer-based learning. The goals of this initiative is to facilitate large-scale practice transformation through...
Organizational culture has an impact on how a business functions. (O’Reilly III, Chatman, & Caldwell, 1991) echo the agreement of researchers over the years that culture may be an important factor in determining how well an individual fits an organizational context. I’ve witnessed the positive and negative effects of organizational culture both in regards to the individual as well as...
I am a software developer and online educator who likes to keep up with all the latest in technology. I also manage cloud infrastructure, continuous monitoring, DevOps processes, security, and continuous integration and deployment.