Voice of the DBA

Author: way0utwest

  • Enhancing Client Experiences with Data and Analysis

    I love sports. The idea of competing and testing yourself against others (and against yourself) is something I’ve enjoyed for most of my life. Often it hasn’t even been important who wins; it’s the experience of competing. I don’t compete much anymore, but I enjoy watching and coaching sports. Teaching a group of younger people to work, train, win, lose, and enjoy sports is very fulfilling.

    I take statistics when I coach, and I provide those to my athletes regularly. The data is helpful for them to understand their performance and how they compare to others. The numbers don’t drive my decisions, or theirs, but they do provide feedback for them about overall performance. Sometimes stats help me keep perspective; sometimes they remind me of something I’ve forgotten. Sometimes they help me realize a mistake is an outlier and not where I ought to focus.

    I ran across an article on how data is being used in more professional sports. This post isn’t about the numbers of the game, but rather the ways in which data enhance the experience for fans. From resource needs to marketing to predictions, data is important to success in large events. The data can also make the fan experience better.

    Most of us are data professionals, and we know the power of data. Many business people know that data can be helpful, after all, they usually give us a never-ending queue reports to build. I think many of these business professionals can struggle with thinking more widely about how to proactively use data in planning, preparation, and prediction. These are things that data professionals have been doing for years, before the current AI/ML fad. We often used past data to help us prepare for the future. I’m not against AI/ML, but I don’t think they are necessary for all predictions.

    Data professionals know that we can use data in many areas of life outside of sports to enhance software for the client experience. I know I enjoy seeing some of the technology advancements that add to the experience from software, and I appreciate those that provide excitement to an experience, as well as those that just ensure things run smoothly. I look forward to seeing what the future might bring as some of the incredibly creative people out there begin to use data and technology to try out new ideas.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.

  • Daily Coping 3 Sep 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to have a friendly chat with someone you don’t know well.

    I was on vacation recently, camping in Custer State Park in South Dakota. It’s a wonderful place, and I can’t recommend enough this as a place to visit at some point.

    In any case, one of the people working at the site was walking around, trying to help someone get their very large camper parked. While we watched them struggle to get into a spot, we chatted a bit. About life, the area, and more. It was a nice 15-20 minute talk with Josh, before he headed out for a week on his own break from work.

    I enjoyed the chance to talk to someone new, with a completely different view on life. He was moving from Chicago to South Dakota, and it I enjoyed our time. Hope I get to see him next year.

  • Daily Coping 2 Sep 2021

    I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQLServerCentral newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

    Today’s tip is to find a way to pay it forward.

    Paying it forward is a way of doing something for others that you’d want someone to do for you. You are hoping to inspire someone else to do something for others, not for you.

    I’ve had a few people do this for me, sometimes buying me something or doing some favor without this being a trade. Without me doing something for them. They were looking for me to continue things forward.

    I’m in town regularly, but not often with crowds. I tend to go when there are less people around. Often I get coffee after yoga, but it can be late morning, so rarely is someone behind me in line.

    The other day that wasn’t the case, so I just decided to pay for the person behind me. this was in the drive through, so I told the person taking payment to let them know I was paying it forward, and I hoped they’d do the same.

    No idea if it worked, but it was a small thing. About US$12 to cover their order.

  • Where We Need Better AI Disclosure and Responsibility

    There are a lot of contract and gig jobs in the world today. It used to be this type of work was widely spread throughout programming and technology, but these days many types of jobs are commonly completed using contract workers. I like the flexibility of contract work, but I also think that these workers need to be better at saving and planning for the future because of less employment stability. Usually they are paid more, but they need to use that to reduce the risk of being unemployed.

    One trend that I’ve seen taking place in some of these positions is the use of software and AI to determine if a worker is doing an acceptable level of work on a regular basis. Amazon might be one of the highest-profile companies doing this, especially as they expand into the delivery business. They are using the power of computers to manage an army of workers rather than traditional human managers. This includes terminating them. There’s an article that talks about some of the experiences of their workers.

    I don’t know how their system works, but I do know the frustration of trying to work with a company that doesn’t use humans for many tasks. If you’ve ever tried to contact Google, you know that it’s incredibly difficult to actually communicate with a human. Google seems to think that its automated systems can handle all situations. They might handle many things, but they don’t do a good job in plenty of situations, and there is little recourse to have a human intervene.

    I do think that AI and ML can help our companies better interact with the world in many cases, but these systems are certainly looking for broad patterns. Maybe these patterns handle the middle 80% of cases, or maybe it’s more like 60%, but there are plenty of situations where humans ought to be involved. Maybe more important, when someone uses these systems to make decisions that impact human life, there should be some explanation and understanding of how the model impacts this specific situation. We want to know why the computer comes to its conclusion in medical care, employment, legal issues, or maybe anything other situation.

    There is work being done to try and explain how these models work. The important thing, however, is to ensure that while we may understand the model, we also need to disclose the reasoning to those affected by the systems. Any appeal process should include this explanation, and likely with a human involved at some point to help evaluate the model for accuracy, fairness, or any other measure that is relevant. To me, we ought to require this of companies using AI models in their business practices.

    Steve Jones

    Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes.