So I finally managed to grab some free time to contribute something to the MakeOverMonday social data project. I’ve been a fan for many years and have often wanted to contribute – and finally I’ve done something that I’m relatively happy with. This is my data story analysing potential attitudes to changes in the James Bond character in terms of Brexit affiliations.
You can also … Read the rest
On the flight back to Australia, I got the opportunity to reflect a little on the New Zealand International Education Conference I had just attended in Auckland. Overall, a fun, though slightly tiring, slog across the Tasman. I got to meet a heap of new people in and around the conference and was lucky enough to be involved in two sessions.
On Tuesday, I spent 30 minutes talking to delegates about how to build the analytical mindset during my session called Getting started in the Data Game. Mostly, I was emphasising the base skills needed in analytics and how … Read the rest
Just last week, it happened that I was sitting at home in front of my laptop with a glass of red wine in my hand when I noted the Department of Immigration and Border Protection had released their latest visa statistics on international students.
This sounds a tad depressing in retrospect, but the mood did strike. I decided to boot up my trusty excel models to quickly cut up some of the statistics to see what insights might be developed from the visa numbers.
Given that international student visa grant rates have a strong correlation with international student commencements, these … Read the rest
[Originally published by IEAA’s Vista Magazine (Summer 2016/17) — I’d strongly recommend following them online and reading their publications if you’re interested in Australian international education!]
Embracing an analytic mindset and capitalising on the technologies in the era of big data are key to reaching Australia’s strategic international education goals, writes Darragh Murray.
A tale of prediction and teenage pregnancy
In 2012, journalist Charles Duhigg came across a fascinating story concerning the power of prediction and teenage pregnancy. Writing for the New York Times, Duhigg told how an irate man confronted the manager of a Target department store … Read the rest
Tableau is a great tool for data visualisation. One major selling point of the product is its excellent mapping tools which make building visualisation fun and interpreting data a hell of a lot easier than in a flat table.
Recently, I was attempting to replicate a neat visualisation I saw on the Guardian’s data blog. Simply put, I wanted to measure some data by country but colour code the data by region as well. A trip through Tableau’s detailed online help and forums only turned up solutions that were either way too complicated or not quite suited to what … Read the rest
Hi all, this is an older article from 2015 where I presented on the topic of data-driven decision making in Australian international higher education. It’s slightly out of date now, but I’ve published it for posterity’s sake. Originally published in October 2015.
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Somewhat ironically, I went with my gut-feeling when I argued that most international divisions in higher education in Australia were not making best use of the massive amount of data that our universities and educators have on international student mobility at the 2015 Australian International Education Conference (AIEC) held in Adelaide last week.
Fortunately, no one called … Read the rest