Learning Resources

Requesting data access matters more than it might seem. The degree of thoughtfulness and specificity of a request for a report determines how quickly, and how accurately, that access is granted. Thoughtful requests are usually processed in a day or two. Vague ones tend to stall,… Read More

Leaders reviewing a draft article agreed on several things. The data itself was sound. No protected information was included. No departments were named. No policies were violated. And yet, there was discomfort about publishing the piece. The worry wasn’t about confidentiality. It was about whether someone might read the story and… Read More

We talk about data all the time along with dashboards, metrics, reports, and insights. But having data is not the same as understanding it and understanding data is not the same as being able to use it well. According to the Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK), data literacy is… Read More

“The data is wrong!”  That reaction is common when numbers don’t match across systems. Sometimes it’s justified. More often, the data isn’t wrong at all. It’s simply answering a different question.  When users compare figures from a transactional system with those from the data warehouse, discrepancies can feel alarming and are often… Read More

A 30-minute introduction to using Data at Vanderbilt. Introduction to Data with Vanderbilt’s CDO Olivia Kew-Fickus Launches in Oracle Learn… Read More

If I imagine myself waking up to a notification showing statistics that I should have slept more, it summons feelings of hopelessness. Inevitably, I should have slept more but the way to enable that involves witchcraft on a toddler, and I don’t possess a wand. It’s tempting to track sleep… Read More

In my recent “Introduction to Data” training video, I urged Vanderbilt data users to be thoughtful about the data you use. I have also heard many people lecturing about how effective use of AI requires good critical thinking skills. Being thougthful and employing critical thinking sound like great ideas, but… Read More