The Impact of COVID-19 on Data Analytics

Professor Gabriel Attoun:

Hi, my name’s Gabriel Attoun, and I’m an Instructor at Maryville University here in St. Louis. I teach courses in the Information Systems program, as well as, the Data Analytics programs.

The job outlook for graduates in these fields has pretty much always been excellent. But, the recent global COVID-19 pandemic has really illuminated the value of data, and data analysis, and data visualization on a scale that we previously hadn’t really thought of.

As somebody who studies the history of data visualization, I often find that it parallels the history of epidemiology. And today we’re seeing that it’s critically important for public agencies to be able to disseminate data about the spread of coronavirus. It’s even more important that the information that they’re presenting is presented in a way that technical and non-technical users can understand, people who have a healthcare background, people who have an epidemiology background, as well as, just general consumers.

So we have this worldwide audience of data consumers that are really discovering the value of well-designed data visualizations. Because, with the right data visualization, you can synthesize, you know, volumes of data, millions of records of coronavirus cases, in this instance. And you can really deliver insights in a way that traditional forms of journalism really can’t accomplish.

So the technologies that we’re teaching at Maryville, whether it be data mining, data storage, data visualization, predictive modeling, these technologies that we’re teaching in the Business Data Analytics program, specifically, have really never been more important, or industry relevant, than they are right now.

We’d love to have you join us. We’d love to, to help you explore data visualization and data analytics. Maryville’s an excellent place to do it. Thanks!