Week 11: Muddy Database Management Systems

Before embarking on this week's lectures and readings, I am going to be completely honest...I did not even know that Microsoft Access even existed. I was familiar with the WORD "database", but I did not actually know what it meant. Whenever I thought of the word "database" the only thing that came to mind was "collection of information." That is extremely general. A "collection of information" is applicable to Microsoft Word, Excel, the Internet, etc.

Before I read the chapter/watched the lectures I reviewed the instructions for the Database project. It seriously made me feel like I was born yesterday. And I thought my mom was computer illiterate...

I would watch a lecture segment and my reaction afterward would be "whaaaat??!" Thank goodness for the Internet because I for surely had many questions about what was presented this week.

I am by no means saying that the lectures were uninformative...they were extremely helpful. But I am the type of individual that needs further explanation and further examples in order to completely grasp a concept that is new to me.

After my endeavors of researching with a Database Management System (DBMS) really is, I learned the following:

It aids with the:

• storage
• manipulation
• reporting
• management
• control

OF DATA!

That still isn't reasonable for me to process what it really is. For me to completely understand what DBMS truly entails I had to submerge myself in to a situation that deals with DBMS.

Hypothetical situation-

I am the owner of a clothing boutique. I have 50 employees and over 5,000 current customers.
I want to keep track of what each customer purchases, how much they spend, where they live, if they are regular customers, and their contact information in order to market correctly.

This is where DBMS comes into play. It's a tool that enables me to efficiently organize and categorize related information. It provides me with a simplified and easy-to-view form of all the data. The primary key function allows me to attribute a certain ID to each shopper, and through accessing each ID number I am able to see all of the information in my database that pertains to that particular shopper.

This is a YouTube video that delves into the specifics of database management systems. It is very informative. Enjoy!

Week 10: Clear VoIP

I think that it is amazing how computers are capable of interpreting our voices, converting our speech into terms that computers can understand and transmitting the information to receiving computers.

This process is known as Voice over Internet Protocol, or most commonly referred to as VoIP. Originally designed for data networking, the success of Internet Protocol (IP) has developed an adaption to voice networking.

It is the transmission of voice traffic over IP-based networks aka calls that can be placed across the Internet. One may use VoIP to call other VoIP users or PSTN gateways (Public Switched Telephone Network.) VoIP to VoIP calls are free and require VoIP hardware and/or software at both ends. VoIP to PSTN gateways are free-based but there are costs involved depending on what services/package one desires. These calls are capable through certain services such as Vonage, SkypeOut/SkypeIn.

There are three different methods to a VoIP network:

• VoIP telephone
• Standard telephone with VoIP adapter
• Computer with with attached microphone

The process of placing a VoIP call using a computer attached microphone would takes place as follows:
1. You speak into the microphone attached to the computer
2. Your voice is converted to compressed digital data stream
3. The data is transmitted across the IP network
4. The data is received to whoever you are trying to communicate with, converted to sound and then sent to the audio output device

Here is quite an interesting VoIP tutorial that teaches you what VoIP is, why to use VoIP and how to use VoIP.

Excel Project

Throughout my educational career I have used Excel for many projects. So, when I saw that we had an Excel project I thought, "Oh that shouldn't be too bad. I know how to use Excel, it'll be a piece of cake." Boy was I wrong...

After watching the lectures for week 10/this project, I felt like I had been hiding under a rock. Why had I not been informed of all the magical tasks that Excel is capable of?! Also, how in the world did businesses manage/edit/track/format data before Excel?

This project entailed data from 500 subjects. The data pertained to their gender, sex and heart rate during a 15 minute workout and a 5 minute cool down. Specific functions in Excel enabled me to find the subject's maximum heart rate, a certain desired target heart rate, the highest heart rate achieved, IF the target was achieved, the percentage of each subject's increased heart rate from the start of the exercise program until the heart rate was reached, how many subjects reached their target heart rate during the 15 minute exercise window, and which demographic group got the most benefit from the exercise program.

Finding answers to all of the questions proposed by the owner of a fitness center required knowing specific formulas for Excel to compute, as well as formatting the data. I learned a plethora amount of skills from this project...skills that were necessary to complete this project. These skills included knowing and understanding the formulas for absolute and relative addressing, finding the average of a large amount of data, the =IF() function and simplifying data to its count rather than sum. I was most impressed with the fact that Excel was able to perform an equation with two numerical factors and present the product as text! (for ex: the "Yes" or "No" response relating to if the subject's heart rate was greater than or equal to his/her target heart rate.)

I am still amazed by the "intelligence" that Excel embodies in order to carry out such amazing tasks. In my opinion I feel as though I am pretty techno-savy and up to date with today's technology...but this project definitely made me feel like I was born yesterday.

Week 9: Clear Excel Formulas

Who would have known that a spreadsheet could think for you?!

I was unaware of these magical math equations and formulas that Excel is able to do until after I watched the lectures for Week 9...and it's quite simple to understand.

Excel uses PEMDAS, which stands for "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally." It is the order of operations that Excel is going to compute to solve formulas. The first thing that Excel is going to compute is within parentheses, then exponentiation, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, left to right. For addition you use the plus symbol [+], [-] for subtraction, [*] for multiplication and [/] for division.

For example sake, let's say that you have a spreadsheet with certain numbers in column A and other numbers in column B and you want to know what the sum of each corresponding cell of A and B is. Next to each specific cell would would input the formula in column C. ALL formulas require the equal sign [=] before the rest of the formula. So in column C each cell's formula would be =A1*B1, =A2*B2, =A3*B3, =A4*B4 etc...
If you wanted to find the difference between the values in corresponding A and B cells you would use the subtraction sign [-] and the formula would like like =A1-B1 or =B1-A1, depending upon which difference you are trying to find. If you wanted to divide, the formula would be =A4/B4 or =B4/A4, also depending on what value you are dividing.

For formulas that include more than 2 columns/rows, a formula might look like =A1*B1(D1-C1). And the order of operations that Excel would do first is subtract the value in C1 from D1, multiply that result by B1, and then multiply that product by A1.

Excel may initially seem overwhelming and complicated, but there are so many resources to assist and help you smoothly navigate your way through the software.

Here is a fabulous video that takes you step-by-step through formulas in Excel.