• Handling Mixed Variable Entropy With Gaussian Binning

    How do you handle the notion of entropy for a system of both continuous and discrete variables? One idea comes from Generalized Additive Models (GAM), which use dummy code to represent categorical variables. Essentially, you would handle continuous variables using the formula for continuous entropy, then dummy code your categorical...

  • Installing Rails On Windows Quickstart Guide

    Installing Rails from Scratch: From Zero to Hello World in 3 Minutes I’m installing Rails from scratch on Windows. Here’s how I went from zero to “hello, world!” in less than 3 minutes. 1. Run the RailsInstaller to Install the Foundation The nice folks at http://railsinstaller.org[RailsTutorial.org] have a wonderful Windows...

  • Iterative Learning for Rigid-Rule Actors

    I’ve gone through the first iteration of my computational intelligence simulation system, and what I got was bunch of dumb actors moving around a giant grid and licking each other. Let me explain. Inspiration I’ve had this idea for a while for a very simple learning and cognition simulation experiment...

  • Focusing on Intelligence Research

    I’m stepping back from my leadership and higher education research to focus on a passion of mine: multi-agent systems research. Lawsonry has always been a hub for my projects, including my Music, my Fiction, my Non-Fiction, and everything in between. Recently I have had an opportunity to take a step...

  • The Analytics Spectrum: What Era Are You In?

    Over the past two years, eight California State University campuses have been involved in a collaborative student analytics initiative involving Oracle’s Student Information Analytics (SIA) system. The intended outcome of this collaboration is a forecasting dashboard for college planners and department leaders to make smarter decision about intervention and service...

  • Resource Requirement Swirl (RSS) and How to Avoid It

    When I met Christina G., a director at a community college in the northeast, she was beaming with excitement. Her college had recently approved her budget augmentation request of nearly $250,000 in on-going expenses for the acquisition, implementation, and deployment of a predictive analytics service in the cloud. Unfortunately, Christina...

  • How Ego Inhibits Progress

    Are your meetings stale and one-directional? Are you having problems getting the right people on the bus to solve a problem? It may be that someone’s ego is getting in the way of progress. In this article we explore the Ego Wall, which is when a leader’s egotism becomes an...

  • Improving Self-Advisement: The Development of Guided Pathway Factsheets

    This is part two of a two-part series for Guided Pathway Factsheets, a free and effective tool for community college leaders to quickly and efficiently hit the ground running with guided pathways. To read part one, click here. Both prospective and matriculated students frequently encounter problems with finding and comprehending...