This is the permanent version of Professor Pooler’s BUA 455 Course Website and is only updated twice a year or when substantial changes are made to the material during the semester.
Homework assignments and ‘Practice Questions’ for tests are not posted on the permanent BUA 455 Website.
Lectures that are solely devoted to review and preparation for mid-semester tests and the final exam are also not available on the permanent website.
Starting on Page 10, this white paper provides specific language about different roles in data analytics.
This section of this white paper may be helpful as you try to explain your skillset in interviews.
Using AI in coding and writing is commonplace and helpful if used cautiously and ethically.
This is a great ‘letter’ from a high school student who ‘broke up’ with AI because she felt it was supplanting her own voice. It’s worth your time to read and consider it.
R - Required all semester
RStudio - Required all semester
Quarto - Required after HW 1
Posit Cloud - Required after Fall Break but can be used sooner if needed.
LinkedIn Learning - Free for Syracuse University Students, Staff, and Faculty
The WIRE initiative will subsidize costs of online software training that results in certification.
Contact their office to arrange a meeting and develop a plan.
This Data Dashboard group project (23% of course grade) serves two purposes in the BUA 455 curriculum:
Students will better understand the whole data management process and how to make good choices at each step to make the work process more efficient and reproducible.
Students will learn about the interactive components of a data management and visualization project, i.e., a dashboard, including how to communicate with technically knowledgeable colleagues and non-technical audiences.
Student groups will develop a Data Dashboard.
In class, we will review how to use the Quarto Dashboard format to publish a multi-page dashboard.
Each group will aggregate, manage, and curate data for a hypothetical client to address their data questions and needs.
One person in each group should ideally versee the project as a whole and ensure that the dashboard is cohesive.
Each page can present a single plot, a set of plots, or a plot and a table, and should have explanatory text and citations for data sources if needed.
The final page of your dashboard will include all citations for software, software packages, AI sources, and data used to create your dashboard.
Many data sources provide data in a downloadable format such as Excel (.xlsx) or .csv. I recommend saving data as CSV UTF-8 files with a .csv postscript.
The list below is in alphabetical order and is not an exhaustive list.
Some data sources do not provide data in a downloadable format so the data values have to be scraped from the website.
A wide variety of data about Europe can be accessed at this site.
Aanalogous to US.Gov for the United States.
Some examples from former students were published using RPubs which is being discontinued.
All BUA 455 dashboards will be published using Posit Connect Cloud
This example is from the Spring of 2026 when I had a smaller class and smaller groups (3-4 students).
This group organized their dashboard pages and displays in a very cohesive manner and managed the space on each page extremely well.
Additional bbackground theme colors can always be added but were not required.
This group created a highly customized color scheme which is not required.
Groups can use one of the many packaged dashboard themes that work really well.
Overall, this is excellent work but dashboards should be less wordy.
This group used the default theme which is fine, but it is easy to change.
Overall, this is also excellent work, but again, a little too wordy.
The perceptive depth of the analysis in the plots made this project stand out.
This group used a packaged dashboard theme and complementary color pallettes that enhanced their dashboard.
This group also did an excellent job of editing the text and almost all of the pages are well arranged.
The data management in the dashboard was excellent. If this was a graduate class, I would encourage the students to go further with the analyses. I also might suggest more advanced plots and subsequent data exploration suggested by the work they had already completed.
In May of 2025, I asked two sixth grade classes to complete an anonymous survey and then I created a dashboard from their responses using the same criteria required for your projects.
This dashboard is posted on GitHub.
I will be using GitHub as the sole platform in a course I am developing, Interactive Exploratory Data Analysis.