Advanced Analytic Techniques Is Back Up And Posting Again!

www.advat.blogspot.com

Each spring, I teach a class called Advanced Analytic Techniques (AAT) here at Mercyhurst.  It is a seminar-style class designed to allow grad students to dig into a variety of analytic techniques and (hopefully) master one or two.   

The students get to pick both the topic and the technique on which they wish to focus so you wind up with some pretty interesting studies at the end.  For example, we have applied the traditional business methodology of "best practices" to western European terrorist groups and the traditional military technique of Intelligence Preparation of The Battlefield to the casino industry.

As you can imagine, some of these projects gain a bit of notoriety for their unique insights.  One of my former students, Jeff Welgan, even had his AAT project written up in the book Hyperformance.

Beyond this deep dive that each student is required to do, the class is also designed to teach students how to evaluate analytic techniques for things such as validity and flexibility.  To help with this process, each week we take a quick look at an analytic technique that no one in the class is using in their projects.  

We start this process with a tour d'horizon of the available literature on the method with a particular focus on the literature that is higher up the evidence pyramid and relevant to intelligence analysis.  At the end of the week, half of the class runs an abbreviated demo of the technique using the other half of the class as guinea pigs.  Once we are done, we all sit down and write up our thoughts about the method.  Last week, for example, we took a (quick) look at Decision Trees.  This week we will be examining various forms of crime mapping.

All of this - the summaries and critiques of the articles we have found, and our overall "evaluation" of the technique - gets posted onto the Advanced Analytic Techniques blog each week.  Over the years, the blog has become increasingly popular and I certainly encourage everyone to take a look and, if you have a comment, join in!

2nd Annual Mercyhurst Report On Hiring Prospects For Entry Level Intelligence Analysts In The National Security Community Is Out! (And It Is Not Pretty...)

http://www.iismu.org/white-papers

Sequester, draw-down, RIF, early retirement - these are the buzzwords that are dominating the hiring discussions in the US government these days.  While last year was marginal, the next 12 months are shaping up to be very tough ones for entry-level intelligence analysts trying to break into the US national security intelligence community. 

Greg Marchwinski, one of our current crop of graduate student all-stars, prepared this year's report which, like last year's report, is based on collected survey data, interviews and emails from knowledgeable individuals, and relevant secondary sources. 

Here is what Greg has to say about the prospects for the next 12 months (from the executive summary):

"Due to uncertainty over federal government deficit reduction initiatives and a decreasing military presence globally, it is highly likely that overall hiring of entry-level intelligence analysts within the US Intelligence Community (IC) will decrease significantly from recent levels until the next budget cycle begins in October, 2013. The only exception to this general trend is cyber-related positions which are likely to see a moderate increase despite budget cuts. Additionally, it is highly likely that sequestration throughout the IC will significantly limit hiring entry-level intelligence analysts in all analytic functions until defense funding negotiations are resolved."

Click on this link to download the full report.

Look for our reports on entry-level intel analyst hiring in law enforcement and in business next month.

Powerful Visual Analytics Tool, Jigsaw, Now Available Free For Download!

John Stasko, and the programming geniuses at Georgia Tech, have finally released their powerful and recently updated visual analysis software, Jigsaw, into the wild.

For those of you who just want the software now, click here to go to John's newly updated website.

It has been a while since I have looked at Jigsaw.  I examined it first back in 2007 (here and here) and we last used it in a project in 2009 (here).  Back then, it was an extremely good product for a fairly narrowly focused type of analytic work.

Today, though, it appears to be a much easier to use and more general purpose type of analytic software.  I was especially blown away by the use cases demonstrated in the video below.  The video is a little long but worth it if you don't know a lot about the state of the art in visual analytics.

I am also particularly impressed with the growing list of publications assessing the software's validity and the video tutorials to help new users get started.

If you are interested in new ideas and new tools for visualizing the results of your analysis -- particularly free ones -- I strongly recommend you check Jigsaw out!

Just Launched My First Game, Widget, On Kickstarter; ENTINT Questions Generated At A Staggering Pace... (ENTINT)

You might notice something different about the site.  Over to the right you will see a small box that contains details on my first game, Widget.  I launched this game last night on Kickstarter.com and the text box you see now will stay up there for the next thirty days or so (clicking on the box will take you to the Widget website in all its glory).

Kickstarter gives you anywhere from 30-90 days to make your target (in my case $4000.  I set my time limit for 30 days -- which Kickstarter recommends).  If you make it, you get the money.  If you don't, you get nothing (and all of your backers do not get charged anything).  Basically, failing costs your backers nothing and costs you only your ego...

So far the launch has generated as many intelligence questions as it has answered.  More next week!

(PS.  On a personal note, I genuinely appreciate the readers of this blog who have backed this game already on Kickstarter.  I have a long way to go yet, but it is both encouraging and humbling to be the recipient of so much good will.  While I also understand that this game might not be perfect for many of the rest of you, I do appreciate those of you who have taken the time to post to Facebook, tweet about it, or otherwise share it with your friends and family.  I am pretty certain that there is someone in everyone's social network who will enjoy this game.  My challenge is to the get word out to them and your help has been invaluable!  Thanks! Kris)

Game-based Learning And Intelligence: A Summary And Re-boot

While I haven't written much about it recently (hence the reason for this re-boot), for the past four years (!), I have been looking at the value of game-based learning techniques in the intelligence classroom.  While I am still a strong advocate of game-based learning approaches for intelligence professionals generally (and intelligence analysts in particular), my outlook, having actually used these techniques in the classroom, is a bit more nuanced and less naive than it was a few years ago. 

I started by looking at several years worth of data in a series of posts I called Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games.  Published in 2010, this is still one of the most popular series of posts I have ever done.  

My goal then was to improve the ability of analysts to see deep patterns in disparate and largely qualitative data sets relevant to problems of strategic importance.  My primary approach to this goal was to use what I think is the most powerful aspect of games - the implicit learning that accompanies them - to improve student performance on real-world problems asked by real-world decisionmakers. 

Nothing that has happened over the last two years suggests that the initial conclusions were wrong.  I am firmly committed to a game-based learning pedagogy in teaching strategic intelligence analysts because it works.  Students simply are able to do strategic intelligence much better, much faster, when I combine traditional concepts in strategic intelligence with appropriate games. 

My most recent round of strategic projects (completed in February) merely reinforced my beliefs.  My students performed so far above their nominal level of expertise that it makes my nose bleed.  The questions they were asked were some of the most difficult I have ever encountered and yet, in every case, a collaborative nimbleness of mind emerged in each team such that they were able to not only effectively answer the challenging questions posed to them by real-world senior decisionmakers but also push beyond the limits of the requirement and exceed expectations in useful and inventive ways.  

Most of their success is attributable to their hard work and dedication but I have always been fortunate enough to have hard working and dedicated students.  I remember the old days, however, when I often had good and sometimes great projects.  Now I can consistently anticipate great and oftentimes extraordinary projects on increasingly difficult questions. 

Unfortunately, students appear to be less "happy" with this game-based approach than with a more traditional lecture/discussion model and this, too, has persisted throughout the years.  Don't get me wrong; they don't hate it (at least not all of them) but, like elite athletes engaged in high intensity interval training, my students seemingly can both acknowledge the value of the exercises while becoming cognitively exhausted at the pace and difficulty of them.

It would have been easy to ignore this modest but noticeable decrease in student satisfaction.  After all, the learning outcomes were significantly better.  While this is the most important thing, of course, it is not the only thing and I began to explore reasons why student satisfaction with a game-based approach were lower than with a traditional lecture/discussion model.  It appeared to me to be counter-intuitive and, frankly, to fly in the face of much of the game-based learning literature.

This led to my second series of posts on the topic which I have called The 5 Myths of Game-based Learning:  A Report From The Classroom.  It is too long to summarize but the parts I have completed are listed below:

Part 1:  Introduction
Part 2:  Myth #1:  Game-based Learning Is New 
Part 3:  Myth #2:  Games Work Because They Capture Attention 
Part 4:  Myth #3:  I Need A Game That Teaches... 
Part 5:  Myth #3A:  I Want To Make A Game That Teaches...

I have not finished this series but intend to do so over the next several weeks.

Recently, I have been distracted with my third major excursion into game-based learning and intelligence - the starting of my own games company.  This effort has been all-consuming and promises to get more so with the launch of my first game, Widget, tomorrow.  

The goal for now is to explore the kind of intelligence that can explore entrepreneurship (ENTINT as I call it).  Hopefully, I will soon be launching some games designed to take advantage of what I have learned about game-based learning and apply it to specific intelligence concepts such that I can better teach intelligence with games rather than merely through them.