The Road to My Master's

[Zarathud]

Where else in life will you get credit for post padding?

[Isgrimnur]

Too bad I'm not in a class that better fits my interests.

[malchior]

I'm in the 2nd class of my data analytics master's at University of Maryland and am liking it. I have a big interest in data science so this was a natural fit for me. My day job is network security consulting and I felt like a Masters degree in Cybersecurity was an overlap on existing skills. I figured that having an additional marketable skill would be nice. Plus security analytics are hot right now and are under served. So far, I've been exposed to new tech for me in IBM Watson and Tableau. I'm learning Python 'formally' finally though I've read tons of Python code in the past. I haven't really written any yet prior to the current class which is Data Management Visualization. It is combined SQL (via MariaDB), Python, and Tableau. I'm an old hat at MySQL so that wasn't new but it got fairly complicated which was nice.

The next class is Data Mining in the fall and I really hope we'll dig into Spark or Hadoop. I'm looking forward to some Python work around learning algorithms, etc. I'm on a consulting project and I'd like to develop a cyber threat hunting program for the client based on good statistical modeling and think this will help quite a bit.

[Isgrimnur]

We're in the early days of post-implementation of OnApproach. With my boss retiring today, the new boss is the old boss, who left to head up (read: be the only guy) the data analytics group.

My pipedream is to get all of the time-insensitive reporting requests handled through there instead of running on the core banking system. At the moment, there's two instances. The first is a straight table dump of our data, the second being a star schema, which I have not had the time to devote to trying to get straight in my head.

[malchior]

Makes sense - I've seen OnApproach at several banks - though mostly just on apps lists with sensitive data during data classification projects from a network security perspective. No insight here but I am seeing that approach to data storage in general with a data lake of raw and something next to it contextualized into something for the 'business' via a star schema.

[Isgrimnur]

Last night, the prof posted an announcement:

This weekend, I discovered some Academic Dishonesty, some plagiarism, in the discussion posts. Now I must go back through all the posts looking for plagiarism. If I find plagiarism, I’ll reduce the score for that post to zero (0).
...
This course is about risk assessment. If you risk cheating . . . you don’t understand this course and deserve a failing grade.

All of my grades are fine, btw.

[LordMortis]

Last night, the prof posted an announcement:

This weekend, I discovered some Academic Dishonesty, some plagiarism, in the discussion posts. Now I must go back through all the posts looking for plagiarism. If I find plagiarism, I’ll reduce the score for that post to zero (0).
...
This course is about risk assessment. If you risk cheating . . . you don’t understand this course and deserve a failing grade.

All of my grades are fine, btw.

That's because you are monarch of citation.

[Isgrimnur]

[El Guapo]

This course is about risk assessment. If you risk cheating . . . you don’t understand this course and deserve a failing grade.

Is that necessarily true, though? What if the person could show that they had a .0001% chance of getting caught, but that there was an enormous economic upside to them for getting an A in the course?

[Isgrimnur]

Then one would take him to task for his faulty estimates and confidence intervals.

[El Guapo]

Getting caught could be a matter of terrible luck. It doesn't necessarily mean that the plan or calculations were wrong.

[Isgrimnur]

Then he needs to show that he modeled it a thousand times and this was a low-probability event.

[El Guapo]

I agree. I'm just taking issue with your professor's blanket statement that anyone who would risk cheating necessarily does not understand the course and deserves a failing grade. I think it's at least possible that they do understand.

[Isgrimnur]

Fair enough. But the focus is on protecting organizations from the risks that people present. Engaging in malfeasance yourself suggests that you don't have a proper understanding of the risks of plagiarism, even when spelled out in every syllabus ever.

[LordMortis]

I agree. I'm just taking issue with your professor's blanket statement that anyone who would risk cheating necessarily does not understand the course and deserves a failing grade. I think it's at least possible that they do understand.

That's why they changed the concept to Disaster Mitigation and Recovery/Risk Assessment from Disaster Prevention. Nobody calls it disaster prevention any more and every loves to refer how many 9s they can "guarantee" you.

[Isgrimnur]

Five nines is the equivalent of under 5.26 minutes of downtime. Per year.

[Isgrimnur]

Details have emerged. The perpetrator lifted text including a bulleted list from a Microsoft TechNet article on firewalls.

And to do the math, the discussion board portion of the class represents 25% of the grade. There are 16 total discussions over the 8-week term, meaning each discussion is worth 1.5625% of your final grade. Each discussion is worth fifteen max points, and you can only earn four for each post. So each individual post represents, at most, 0.4166...% of your final grade.

In the grand scheme of things, it may have been a calculated risk, but if it was, man, is he bad at math.

[El Guapo]

I mean, that could have been someone in your class. It could also have been a four hundred pound person sitting on their couch. Who can say?

Meanwhile, I notice that your professor hasn't talked at all about Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. What's up with that?

[Smoove_B]

In the grand scheme of things, it may have been a calculated risk, but if it was, man, is he bad at math.

I've seen similar things with assignments that are worth about 4% of an overall grade. However, once I see that you're plagiarizing, that's when the fun begins - because if you did it once, you likely did it before I caught you. What people don't seem to understand is that with online assignments and discussions, I have access to the same material you do - so finding where you pulled it from is usually rather easy. I can also pick up when someone's written tone or mannerisms abruptly change (red flag). Another is when people provide details outside the boundaries of what I cover (wow your high school social studies teacher really covered Jacobson V. Mass 197 U.S. 11 (1905) in amazing detail - that's where you obtained all that extra information and not Wikipedia?)

From what I've gathered, it comes down to time. Spend 3+ hours a week processing all the course content or roll the dice and hope the instructor doesn't notice you spent an hour copying discussion points online.

Your instructor is also much nicer than I am. Reducing the score to zero is just the first step. We must also establish whether or not this is a chronic problem for you and that's above my pay grade. I want to say I'm amazed people are doing this at a graduate level, but I'm not.

[Kraken]

I want to say I'm amazed people are doing this at a graduate level, but I'm not.

Wife runs into plagiarists regularly in her graduate-level communications courses. A surprisingly large fraction of them don't think they're doing anything wrong. They've gotten away with it throughout their academic careers...and if it's on the internet, that means it's fair game. Try to convince them otherwise and you get a .

Yes, these are people who are about to become Masters...of Communication.

[Isgrimnur]

Oh, he's right there with you, Smoove.

Now I must go back through all the posts looking for plagiarism. If I find plagiarism, I’ll reduce the score for that post to zero (0).
...
I've reopened the week 5 discussions. If you forgot to note the source of your post, now is your chance to respond to you post with the source you forgot to include and to apologize to the class for failing to include the source the first time. I'm going to have to go through the other week's discussion and update the grades.

If you are cross this line again, I'll introduce you to the Dean of Students.

[Isgrimnur]

[Paingod]

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Nerd.

[Isgrimnur]

[Unagi]

Good job man. Very nice.

[Zarathud]

That entitles you to two coins at the arcade to play Pac Man or Donkey King. Make them last!

[coopasonic]

I remember showing my report card at the arcade for free tokens!

[malchior]

That system looks familiar.



Data Mining next. Only 4 more semesters to go.

[Isgrimnur]

That system looks familiar.



Data Mining next. Only 4 more semesters to go.

UMUC, huh?

[El Guapo]

And you got away with it, too!

Seriously though, congrats and well done.

[malchior]

That system looks familiar.



Data Mining next. Only 4 more semesters to go.

UMUC, huh?

Yeah - UMUC. My employer has a deal with them which marginally mitigates the cost. I was remarking mostly on the interface. I am reasonably sure that is Touchnet underneath. Many moons ago I did the first install of a precursor of this software. I hope it is better to maintain than it was 15 years ago because it was *ter-r-r-r-i-ble*. It broke if a squirrel ran across a telephone line anywhere along the east coast.

[Isgrimnur]

Tuition reimbursement came across the wire at the full dollar amount. Looks like I get to manage my tax burden on my own. Should be interesting.

So I need to talk to payroll, as there isn't yet a paystub for the payment in the payroll system, so I don't know how it's being reported. And I may need to pay a tax preparer this year to figure out the tax implications of the reimbursement and the (likely reduced) Lifetime Learning Credit.

In the meantime, 25% of the amount over the tax-free amount is going into savings.

[Smoove_B]

Hmm...I don't ever remember paying taxes on tuition reimbursement. Granted, it was 50% at one job and 0% for another. I'm guessing my accountant took care of whatever was necessary. Or I'm a tax fraud and going to prison for crimes committed 12 years ago.

[Isgrimnur]

The current yearly tax-free limit is $5,250, which is where it's been since 1986. Odds are good, depending on timeframe and that 50% mark, you stayed well below that number. Alas, graduate classes are expensive.

[Kraken]

You need to send the IRS a check with form 1040-ES by 9/15 to avoid interest and penalties. Worthwhile if it's a substantial sum.

[Isgrimnur]

Given that I just got it today, Friday seems a bit quick on the deadline.

[Kraken]

Given that I just got it today, Friday seems a bit quick on the deadline.

Q3 waits for no man. Deadline for estimated payments is 9/15.

If you haven't deposited it yet and you want to keep your nose clean, wait til Q4 starts on 10/1. Although the IRS won't know when the money hit/taxes were due unless you tell them...if you make the estimated payment before the end of the year you'll probably be fine. IRS has bigger fish to fry and nobody to fry them.

[Isgrimnur]

Just got off the phone with payroll. The reimbursement comes through as a lump sum, but then they will withhold the taxes from future paychecks. Our 'payroll queen' (30+ years at the company) will be preparing 1-4 paycheck scenarios for the withholding so that I can cater the financial impact to my liking.

Seeing as I have no pressing needs for the funds, my initial thoughts are to have them take the lump out of next payroll and use a portion of the reimbursement to cover it.

[Isgrimnur]

Given the option of anywhere to 1-4 pay periods, and the total amount taken in taxes decreases based on how many period I use. Looking at their numbers versus mine, I expect it to come out near a wash if I let them spread the extra deductions out over three periods. Any shorter, and I'm paying in more than I expect to actually owe. Any longer, and I'm short.