Month: October 2015

Data Management – Missing Values

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Continuing my course in Data Management and Visualization with Coursera… For those that haven’t followed on my previous posts, I am currently enrolled in a Data Analysis Specialization with Wesleyan University through Coursera. With data from Gapminder, I am exploring a broad and basic question: does urbanization drive economic growth? For those of you interested in reading my literature review to gain a background in this project, please visit this page. Though I am working in SAS and Python in an attempt to learn both, I will only be presenting my work in SAS here (though I will also include my Python code for reference). The output format in SAS is easier on the eyes in my opinion. For this third assignment, I was originally going to try to calculate the urban population growth rate for 2010. Instead, I found the data available on Gapminder so I did not have to create a secondary variable for population growth. After inserting the latest variable, I decided to code out missing data. Since my focus is on GDP, …

Frequency Tables…The World is Mainly Poor…

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I have always been hungry for knowledge and been ambitious about my goals. Having the chance to finally learn some programming, I decided I was going to learn both SAS and Python. Luckily, this isn’t my first exposure. While at ASU, I learned the basics of R programming and it really helped me to get an understanding of writing syntax in both SAS and Python. For my second assignment for the Data Management and Visualization course with Wesleyan University through Coursera, I am required to post the program I wrote and the frequency tables that it produced. Just as a reminder, I am working with Gapminder data on urbanization and economic growth. For the present analysis, I am using GDP per Capita, GDP Growth, Urban Population as a percentage of total population from 2010 and Urban Population in agglomerations over 1 million people from 2007. This is my code in SAS: FILENAME REFFILE “/home/wfhsu.taiwan0/my_courses/Data1.xlsx” TERMSTR=CR; PROC IMPORT DATAFILE=REFFILE DBMS=XLSX OUT=Gapminder2010; GETNAMES=YES; RUN; PROC CONTENTS DATA=Gapminder2010; RUN; /*to importat data from Excel file upload*/ LIBNAME mydata …

The Power (or Lack of) of Internships

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There is always something to learn in every situation – depending on your perspective. Some might say it is always better to get an internship at a large corporation for its name recognition, connections, and employment opportunities. It is true. A lot of times, having a big name on your resume (much like a degree from a renowned academic institution) can stack the odds in your favor during a job hunt. Yet, I believe being an intern at relatively new or small companies provide special opportunities to learn and grow. The current company I am working for is small. We have two owners, nine employees, and two interns including me. I am the marketing intern and I work with two others, making up a three-person marketing team. The small size of this company meant that I was actually handed much more responsibilities and allowed much more involvement in the business than the average intern. As of today, I am in charge of operating and managing the company’s market research and analysis, Facebook Ads, and Google Ads …

Data Visualization Assignment 1 – That Urbanization Thing

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“When you are that curious about the world, scholarship never ends.” – October 18, 2015 As I mentioned in my last post, I started the Data Analysis and Interpretations Specialization with Coursera in order to gain more skills relevant to my pursuit of urban studies and interest in urban planning and development. Our assignment for the first week is to develop a research question based on the data sets provided by the course or another data set of our own choice. With my background and interest in cities, I looked through the code books for each data set looking for relevant data. I decided that the Gapminder data set had the information I needed to look into the effects of urbanization globally. Though the scale is on a national level, which can obscure many relationships, particularly the distinction between rural and urban areas and their respective economies, I look forward to comparing the general trends and effects of urbanization. The increasing rate of urbanization has been accompanied by a corresponding rise in number of urban …

Learning and Growing! Internship and Coursera Specialization!

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Last week, I started my internship with WLM Financial – a real-estate brokerage. With my interest in urban planning and development and my background in the social sciences, it appears to be a good fit to work as their Marketing Intern. I was quickly integrated into the marketing team and I am happy to say that the owners have been very trusting and gave me a great opportunity to learn. They have taught me a great deal in the past week about mortgages and real-estate. They are always open to questions and really took me under their wings. I look forward to learning more about the real-estate industry and about business development. Though I am only an intern, my opinions were valued and contributed to the direction the company is taking. Using my skills with ArcGIS, I took the initiative located our target audiences. I integrated demographic data with geospatial data from the U.S. Census Bureau to reveal locations where our target audience might be located. I was quickly able to locate ten cities in …

Customer Service is…

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Today, I helped out with the Taiwan Products Day in San Gabriel, CA. It was a great learning experience and one of the first times I helped out with a large scale event. Customer service was incredibly important and I found it amazing to help people. With a winning smile and great patience, it was amazing to see how easy it is to make someone feel comfortable. I enjoyed solving problems as well. One of the vendors could not find her package at all and it was essential for her meetings with her buyers today. (Hooray Google!), after obtaining her tracking number and the logistics company, I was able to track her package. We found that it was delivered safely to the hotel and was misplaced somewhere. With the help of the friendly hotel staff, we were able to locate her parcel and deliver it to her before the event began. It may sound simple, but helping a nervous vendor feel comfortable and ready for her meetings was a great feeling. I began to understand …