103: Ownership of Knowledge and AI It is July 2025. “The MIT Article” is all anyone is talking about. This is the article on arXiv.org in which researchers compared the essays written by those using ChatGPT, web search, or only their brains. It is a long and interesting preprint article. The article is surely of Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
Preprint Research
There is a paper that has been causing lots of chatter recently. It is a paper released by authors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and it suggests that using generative AI (in this case ChatGPT) has important effects humans write essays. Folks who I associate with are educators and technology experts, so they have Read More
Data Governance
a post for students in my database course Ever wondered what keeps all that digital information flowing smoothly, securely, and ethically in the vast world of data? It’s not magic, it’s data governance. Think of data governance as the traffic laws, road signs, and even the emergency services of the data highway. Without them, it Read More
Visualizing Your Data: A Guide for Database Students
Welcome, aspiring data navigators! In your journey through the world of databases, you’ve likely spent a lot of time learning how to store, organize, and retrieve information. But what happens after you pull all that valuable data? How do you make sense of large tables filled with numbers and text? This is where data visualization Read More
Reports: Sharing Your Data with the World
a post for students in my database course Effective communication is paramount in the field of data analytics, and often, the culmination of a data professional’s hard work is presented in a report. These reports are not merely collections of numbers; they are powerful tools designed to translate complex data into actionable insights, enabling informed Read More
Cleaning Data
a post for students in database course Ever heard the saying, “Garbage in, garbage out”? It’s a fundamental truth in the world of data analytics. Imagine you’re trying to bake a perfect cake, but half your ingredients are spoiled, or you’ve accidentally doubled the sugar in one bowl and forgotten it entirely in another. Your Read More
The Deceptive Simplicity of Percentages: Why Our Grading Systems Need a Revolution
For decades, percentages have been the cornerstone of academic assessment, a seemingly objective and straightforward way to quantify student performance. We assign a numerical score, average it out, and present it as a clear indicator of learning. Yet, beneath this veneer of simplicity lies a system riddled with flaws, one that actively hinders effective assessment, Read More
ETL and ELT
a post for students in my database course Queries are fundamental to data analytics, enabling the extraction and manipulation of information from databases and other sources. When working with data, particularly in building data pipelines, two primary methodologies for moving and preparing data are Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) and Extract, Load, Transform (ELT). While both Read More
Queries
a post for students in my database course In the fast-paced world of data, insights are currency, and queries are the keys to unlocking them. For anyone stepping into database design and management, understanding queries isn’t just a technical skill; it’s a fundamental capability that underpins almost every task, from collecting raw information to generating Read More
The Data Ecosystem: Unpacking Data Lakes, Data Warehouses, and Data Marts
a post for students in my database course In our previous post, we delved into the evolving landscape of databases, moving beyond the familiar structured world of SQL to explore NoSQL. We established that NoSQL, or “Not Only SQL,” encompasses a diverse range of databases, some structured and relational (like JSON’s key-value pairs), and others Read More