I’M WRITING THIS on February 12th, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. He would have been 210 years old today. Almost entirely self taught—like many of our most skilled technology experts—President Lincoln was a master at assessing situations, and he invested large amounts of time studying and evaluating all the data he could gather before making an informed decision. He did it with books and other printed material, personal conversations, and the stories he heard and retold.

He had no AI and no Machine Learning, but his process of making use of the available data, even if it was hard to gather and discern, can be a lesson for us in our decision making today. The predictive value of data analytics has been proving its worth for a number of years, and with the current technology of feeding the data into instant response systems armed with AI and ML, the implementations are growing exponentially—and BTW, excellent jobs and careers are growing right here in Arkansas: Check out the new Apprenticeship Spotlight in this issue of the ACDS Newsletter.

–Bill Yoder,

Executive Director