Year-end is a time lots of lists are made and Google was right in the mix with their Year in Search 2017. The list shows us what we were all most interested in learning about last year. Topping the list are Hurricane Irma, the iPhone X and 8, Matt Lauer, and Meghan Markle.

This year, I set a goal for myself to read 24 books and, unlike some of those hard-to-reach New-Years resolutions, I stuck with it. So, I was thrilled when Goodreads emailed to ask me if I’d like to see my “year in review”- duh! Then it hit me that this is a perfect example of why descriptive statistics can be so fun (yes, I said fun).

My wife and I grew up in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area and relocated to New Hampshire in 1992. Since we both still have family “Down South”, we make trips around major holidays to visit them. 25 years of driving through one of the busiest traffic corridors in the US and we’ve become experts on the routes- how to get around Boston and NYC and when to leave so we miss rush hour traffic as well. When our kids were younger, we even knew where all of the McDonald’s Play Place stops were

Just like dating, predictive modeling is an iterative process. We sometimes have to go back and revise some of the steps that we took, or wipe the slate clean and start over. In order to prevent some of the common mistakes that come with predictive modeling, there are a couple of questions that we should ask our future x-variables before we decide to use them in our analysis.

I was recently working with a customer, Robin DePolo, of Mount Vernon Nazarene University. We were working on preparing some data for a predictive model, but the conversation shifted to all of the other (countless) things that she needs to get done before she can kick back and enjoy the holiday season. Sadly, Robin didn’t mean that she had lots of decorating, or shopping to do either- she meant required reporting.

Working for Rapid Insight, I have had the pleasure to talk with many of our higher education customers about their experiences with the recruiting, admissions and student success initiatives at their institutions. It always inspires me to hear the genuine care they have for the students. In the last year, this whole process became personal to me as my son went through the whole high school to college journey.