How i started my analytics journey -Online Surveys, Automated Reports and Web Analytics

 My first exposure to proper analytics started during my summer internship, i opted to do my internship for a Internet service provider in Gujarath , where i was given a problem statement " What does the customer expect from ******" so as a duitiful MBA student i prepared a questionnarie with 25 questions based on all the various parameters listed by textbooks, and visited each and every customer of the ISP in the city and started the data collection.

Years later when i think of the analysis i did i am amazed on how much the things have changed and how the basics still is relevant. "Data" it is the most important component even today. Three major lessons from the data collection, not all questions were not applicable to all customers, there was lots of empty responses, some questions asked which tried to get additional qualitative information lead to respondents being confused and giving conflicting answers to supporting questions. Respondents were not paitent enough to read through the 15 questions and respond properly. So how would have i done this differently ? 

• Categorize the customers into relevant groups and prepare questionnaire relevant to each group, thereby reducing blank responses
• Group related questions into sections and create a hiearchial question block.
• Limit the research objective and keep the questions under 15 and conduct interviews with select customers to get more information.

This experience of doing data collection lead me to think how can i automate this process and can i make this easy, my research introduced me to online forms (Survey Monkey, Google Forms). This was a great eyeopener to me, i was first exposed to vizualization and automated insights generation . Once a survey was notified as completed it automatically creates a master data set and also a report . Each and every question was statistically analysed and the important trends highlighted. This experience pushed me to further search for online analytics and it did not diappoint me. 

Enter Google Analytics , I was reading an article about digital advertising and how google is leveraging the data from search to created targeteded advertising , so i started to search and read more about it, while learning about this i came across Google Analytics, it promised that if you have a website or a blog you can find out how many people visit your site and the geograpic location of your audience. I was hooked, i was writing a blog about various topics related to MBA and wanted to increase my audience, so i added my Blog to Google analytics and started to analyse my audience . This was an interesting experiment, i came to understand what topics were driving visitors to my blog and how i can improve the content to increase page views and drive traffic.

These simple day to day interactions with various kinds of analytics, played a major role in my growth as an Data Analyst /Intelligence Specialist, i got confidence to do analysis and explore new technologies, i came to understand the endlesss possibilities of analytics and most important of all the importance of quality data. So if you are wondering on how to start your data analysis journey, start with the simple things, your college project, a survey in your neighbourhood ,your social media account and then move on to the popular tools and technologies available.

Thanks for your time, do share your feedback and inputs

Websites Mentioned in Article
My Blog

Google Analytics

Survey Monkey

10 Common Baits used by Colleges to trap students

 

The admission season is going to start and you will be bombarded with too much information on what course and college to choose. I would like to go on a different angle and share 10 common baits used by Indian colleges to trap students.

1. Additional Degree from foreign universities:

   This is a very common tactic used by many colleges in India, they will say at the end of the course your kid will get two degrees, one from Indian University and another from Foreign University. Don't fall for this trick. Most of the times the Foreign University will be established by the same college in a country which allows digital universities and the degrees will be equivalent to diplomas and might not be recognized by many countries. When the college says XYZ University in this country, don't simply see the brochure and website, go dig a bit deeper and see who founded the university and use google maps street view to find the campus. One college which i searched was having a PO box as their campus.

2. Gallery Type Classes and fully airconditioned campus:

Every college will have an admission tour, they will take you to their most fancy classroom which has gallery type classes and  Audio Visual setup, believe me most classes will not even have a functioning AC . When looking at campus look for a spacious campus with trees and good ventilation, make a point to visit the students restrooms and have food in the canteen. Also if possible visit the campus in a normal day and check how much students are there for a classroom. There are many colleges which plays musical chairs with classroom as there is more students than the classroom can accommodate.

3. International Journals and magazines in Library :

I once worked in a college which said they have more than 50 international journals and magazines. But the truth is there were 3 different institutions registered in one address and the magazines outnumbered the journals. To people who are new to academics, Journals is much costlier than magazines and most magazines is of no use to academics . Also AICTE and UGC norms stipulate the minimum no of journals for each course and most colleges prepare fake lists for the inspection and never bother to get quality journals. So when going for a college visit, check the library specifically the journal rack and ask for the latest issue, it will tell how much the college prioritizes academic pursuit.

4. International Industrial Visit:

Industrial Visit is another name for fun trip, when a college says free international visit means, they are getting extra fees other than what is required, and mostly it will be tour packages for 25-40 thousand rupees. Believe me there is very little learning opportunity in these international Industrial visits.

5.  Earn while you learn :

In the past few years many colleges have started to offer internships while learning, some colleges have even started to reduce college days to 3 and 3 days to internships, there are some colleges which says earn while you learn and say you can earn 10000 rupees per month during internship. Always keep away from colleges saying these ridiculous schemes, if you want to earn money during college, there are many jobs in Retail industry which specifically asks for college students and you can actually use these experience when you join the workforce.

6. Degrees with specializations focussing on trending topics:

There are many colleges which create courses based on trending topics, BSc Machine Learning, BSc Analytics , Bcom CA  etc .. if you read the syllabus copy you will find by replacing 3 papers thy will claim it has huge placement opportunities. most of the time the same faculty will be teaching both degrees and many faculty does not even have a clue on what they are teaching. I have seen a lot of faculty who don't even know the basics of Analytics teach Business Analytics paper.

7. Sweet talking frontline staff :

Some colleges even use this nasty trick of having good looking faculty and staff members act as frontline staff. There are some colleges which even give mandate of  male staff members talk with female candidates and vice versa . they sweet talk the students promising them a very friendly environment which has a hip crowd and modern campus. If you are looking for just getting a degree, then these type of colleges is for you. If you are looking for a place to develop your skills and get a job, run away from these type of colleges.

8 Equivalent degrees and Integrated courses :

If you attend an education expo you will come across some colleges which advertise that they have courses to cover every type of career choice; if you come across a college like that run away from that stall. There is one college which is basically an arts and science college but claims it can give a course equivalent to engineering , which is nothing but a BBA  degree together with an MBA and a diploma from foreign university in 5 years (Their logic is we are covering most of the subjects in BE degree so it is equivalent to Engineering) This package they rebrand it differently and  their marketing staff claims it is superior to engineering. Similarly there are colleges which packages 7 year medical courses UG in India and medical degree in Caribbean or African Universities. Always avoid these traps as it has too much grey areas and you might need to  clear a lot of regulatory hurdles for your degree to be recognized.

9.  360  degree performance appraisal of students:

There is a current trend among colleges in India which promise the parents they will do a transformation of students and will send in updated 360 degree report cards regularly. This is not something which is bad, but most colleges goes about this in a wrong way, they get periodic quizzes and activities and assign fancy terminologies for each activity and score them and send monthly reports. The students after some time game the system and get high scores without any real transformation. SO it is a waste of resources and money with no real benefit.

10.  Customized Text books:

Some colleges goes even further to distinguish them, they advertise that their students have exclusive textbook , which no one has and this is a unique feature. In reality, it is very easy to get customized books as many leading publishers give the option of building your own book , like adding or deleting modules to a common text book frame and printing them in special batches.

these are the top 10 ways colleges try to catch unsuspecting students, always do a complete research of the colleges before you make a decision. Please be careful and always take the promises made my the frontline staff with a pinch of salt. 

Happy College Hunting....