Final course. Yay, I guess.
I haven't blogged in a bit. Some of it was work, though, it wasn't that busy of a week. Partly this is due to class starting. I'm taking Applied Data Analytics, having completed my capstone last semester.
Analytics isn't a problem for me. I've always been fairly good at math, so that part isn't challenging. What I'm not so fond of is using these techniques, along with a ton of data, to sell more junk to people. Marketers have all sorts of euphemisms for this, e.g., "delivering and capturing value" or "tapping into latent demand," but I don't really buy it. In most cases, buying more shit isn't going to make your life better. And the stuff that is needed (e.g. food, shelter, healthcare), is prohibitively expensive as companies use any excuse to gouge their customers.
Cory Doctorow wrote an excellent blog post about this, so I won't go into much depth on the economics and power dynamics behind this. But I don't really want to be a part of the whole sordid business.
But, at this point, I'm practically done with the degree, so I'm going to hold my nose and finish the class. And the math itself is neat, as is learning how to analyze it with R and Tableau. Those skills can be used in many ways and toward many different ends. So, for a lot of it, I'll probably just focus on learning the tools themselves and take the marketing BS with a grain of salt.
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