Executive SummaryData mining is an emerging field of study in Information Systems programs. Although the course content has been streamlined, the underlying technology is still in a state of flux. The purpose of this paper is to describe how we utilized Microsoft Excel's data mining add-ins as a front-end to Microsoft's Cloud Computing and SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence platforms as backends to teach a senior level data mining methods class. The content presented and the hands on experience gained have broader applications in other areas, such as accounting, finance, general business, and marketing. Business students benefit from learning data mining methods and the usage of data mining tools and algorithms to analyze data for the purpose of decision support in their areas of specialization.Our intention is to highlight these newly introduced capabilities to faculty currently teaching a business intelligence course. Faculty interested in expanding their teaching portfolio to the data mining and the business intelligence areas may also benefit from this article.This set of integrated tools allowed us to focus on teaching the analytical aspects of data mining and the usage of algorithms through practical hands-on demonstrations, homework assignments, and projects. As a result, students gained a conceptual understanding of data mining and the application of data mining algorithms for the purpose of decision support. Without such a set of integrated tools, it would have been prohibitive for faculty to provide comprehensive coverage of the topic with practical hands-on experience.The availability of this set of tools transformed the role of a student from a programmer of data mining algorithms to a business intelligence analyst. Students now understand the algorithms and use tools to perform (1) elementary data analysis, (2) configure and use data mining computing engines to build, test, compare and evaluate various mining models, and (3) use the mining models to analyze data and predict outcomes for the purpose of decision support. If it was not for the underlying technologies that we used, it would have been impossible to cover such material in a one-semester course and provide students with much needed hands-on experience in data mining.Finally, what we presented is how to utilize the cloud as a computing platform that transformed the role of a student from "doing low-level IT" in a data mining course to a business intelligence analyst using tools to analyze data for the purpose of decision support.
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt 0.5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;">The goal of a privacy policy statement of a web site is to inform users of the policies and procedures of a web-site as it relates to their collection, use, sharing, access, security and use of technology as it relates to collection of data (cookies and web beacons) and disclosure of personally identifiable information when a user visits the web site. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt 0.5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt 0.5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">In this paper we perform exploratory data analysis of the historical evolution of the readability as well as the reading grade level of the privacy policy statements of Google, Yahoo, Myspace and Facebook. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We used the Flesch-Kinkaid, Gunning Fog and SMOG reading grade analysis measures. We gathered summary statistics of the complexity of each privacy statement (count of 3<sup>+</sup> syllables words, count of 6<sup>+</sup> characters words, count of 20<sup>+</sup> word sentences). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt 0.5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal; margin: 0in 27pt 0pt 0.5in; mso-pagination: none;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman';">We conclude that (1) Except for Yahoo.com, these privacy policy statements are currently written for web-users with a minimum of 2 years of college education. This is not the case for most of social networks users. (2) Using Yahoo.com as a benchmark, privacy policy statements can accomplish their goals and maintain a reading grade level of high school education or less. Accordingly, social networks can accomplish their goal of providing clear and concise privacy policy statements without having to complicate the policy statements with too many 3+ syllable words, 6+ characters words and 20+ word sentences. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In summary, it is possible to write a legally binding privacy policy statement that is also clear and easy to read.</span></p>
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