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15 changes: 13 additions & 2 deletions 02_activities/assignments/DC_Cohort/Assignment2.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -56,7 +56,10 @@ The store wants to keep customer addresses. Propose two architectures for the CU
**HINT:** search type 1 vs type 2 slowly changing dimensions.

```
Your answer...
There are two ways to architect a CUSTOMER_ADDRESS table depending on whether the store needs to retain historical address data or not.
The first approach is a Type 1 Slowly Changing Dimension, which overwrites the existing record whenever a customer's address changes. The table simply holds one row per customer with the usual address columns, and when an update comes in, that row is replaced. This is simple and keeps the table small, but the old address is gone forever — there is no way to recover what it was before the change.
The second approach is a Type 2 Slowly Changing Dimension, which preserves history by inserting a new row every time an address changes rather than overwriting the old one. Each row carries a valid_from date, a valid_to date (left null while the record is still active), and an is_current flag. When a customer moves, the existing row gets a valid_to date stamped on it and is_current set to false, and a fresh row is inserted representing the new address. This means the table grows over time, but you can query it at any point in the past and know exactly what address was on file at that moment.
For a bookstore, Type 2 is generally the better choice. If a customer disputes a delivery or you need to audit where an order was shipped, you can look up the address that was active on the date of that order — something Type 1 makes impossible once the customer has since moved.
```

***
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -191,5 +194,13 @@ Consider, for example, concepts of labour, bias, LLM proliferation, moderating c


```
Your thoughts...
Boykis's article challenges a comfortable assumption that runs through most public conversation about artificial intelligence — that these systems are somehow automatic, neutral, or self-generated. The title cuts straight to the point: neural nets are just people all the way down. Behind every model is a chain of human decisions, human data, and human labour, and the ethical problems that come with AI are largely problems about how that human foundation is treated and obscured.

The most concrete issue the article surfaces is labour. Building a machine learning model requires vast quantities of labeled data — images identified, sentences classified, content flagged as safe or harmful. That work is done by large, distributed workforces of low-wage contractors, often in the Global South, paid per task with no benefits, no stability, and no recognition in the final product. The companies that deploy these models present them as technological achievements while the human assembly line underneath stays invisible. That invisibility is not incidental — it is part of how the industry sustains itself.

Content moderation sits at an especially troubling intersection of labour and harm. Workers who review and categorize violent, abusive, or explicit content are exposed to a relentless stream of disturbing material, frequently without meaningful psychological support. The clean, safe-feeling experience at the user end exists because someone else processed the worst of what humans produce online, quietly and cheaply. That is an ethical cost that rarely appears in conversations about AI progress.

Bias is another direct consequence of this human foundation. Data reflects the world as it has been, not as it should be, and the people who collect and label it bring their own cultural assumptions with them. A model trained on that data and then deployed globally will encode those assumptions as though they were objective facts. When AI systems influence decisions in hiring, lending, criminal justice, or healthcare, biased outputs stop being an abstract concern and start producing concrete harm for people who have no visibility into why a decision was made.

What makes Boykis's framing valuable is that it closes off a common escape route. When something goes wrong with an AI system, the tendency is to treat it as a technical problem — a parameter to adjust, a dataset to clean. But if the system is people all the way down, then the failures are human failures: of accountability, of fair compensation, of whose knowledge and perspective gets treated as the default. Fixing them requires more than better engineering.
```
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146 changes: 134 additions & 12 deletions 02_activities/assignments/DC_Cohort/assignment2.sql
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -23,7 +23,9 @@ Edit the appropriate columns -- you're making two edits -- and the NULL rows wil
All the other rows will remain the same. */
--QUERY 1


SELECT
product_name || ', ' || COALESCE(product_size, '') || ' (' || COALESCE(product_qty_type, 'unit') || ')'
FROM product;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -41,7 +43,14 @@ HINT: One of these approaches uses ROW_NUMBER() and one uses DENSE_RANK().
Filter the visits to dates before April 29, 2022. */
--QUERY 2


SELECT
customer_id,
market_date,
DENSE_RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY customer_id ORDER BY market_date) AS visit_number
FROM customer_purchases
WHERE market_date < '2022-04-29'
GROUP BY customer_id, market_date
ORDER BY customer_id, market_date;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -53,7 +62,17 @@ only the customer’s most recent visit.
HINT: Do not use the previous visit dates filter. */
--QUERY 3


SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT
customer_id,
market_date,
DENSE_RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY customer_id ORDER BY market_date DESC) AS visit_number
FROM customer_purchases
GROUP BY customer_id, market_date
) AS ranked_visits
WHERE visit_number = 1
ORDER BY customer_id;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -66,7 +85,17 @@ You can make this a running count by including an ORDER BY within the PARTITION
Filter the visits to dates before April 29, 2022. */
--QUERY 4


SELECT
customer_id,
product_id,
market_date,
COUNT(*) OVER (
PARTITION BY customer_id, product_id
ORDER BY market_date
) AS purchase_count
FROM customer_purchases
WHERE market_date < '2022-04-29'
ORDER BY customer_id, product_id, market_date;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -85,7 +114,14 @@ Remove any trailing or leading whitespaces. Don't just use a case statement for
Hint: you might need to use INSTR(product_name,'-') to find the hyphens. INSTR will help split the column. */
--QUERY 5


SELECT
product_name,
CASE
WHEN INSTR(product_name, '-') > 0
THEN TRIM(SUBSTR(product_name, INSTR(product_name, '-') + 1))
ELSE NULL
END AS description
FROM product;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -94,7 +130,9 @@ Hint: you might need to use INSTR(product_name,'-') to find the hyphens. INSTR w
/* 2. Filter the query to show any product_size value that contain a number with REGEXP. */
--QUERY 6


SELECT *
FROM product
WHERE product_size REGEXP '[0-9]';


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -111,7 +149,32 @@ HINT: There are a possibly a few ways to do this query, but if you're struggling
with a UNION binding them. */
--QUERY 7


WITH daily_sales AS (
SELECT
market_date,
ROUND(SUM(quantity * cost_to_customer_per_qty), 2) AS total_sales
FROM customer_purchases
GROUP BY market_date
),

ranked_sales AS (
SELECT
market_date,
total_sales,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY total_sales DESC) AS best_rank,
RANK() OVER (ORDER BY total_sales ASC) AS worst_rank
FROM daily_sales
)

SELECT market_date, total_sales, 'Best Day' AS label
FROM ranked_sales
WHERE best_rank = 1

UNION

SELECT market_date, total_sales, 'Worst Day' AS label
FROM ranked_sales
WHERE worst_rank = 1;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -132,7 +195,24 @@ How many customers are there (y).
Before your final group by you should have the product of those two queries (x*y). */
--QUERY 8


SELECT
v.vendor_name,
p.product_name,
ROUND(5 * vi.original_price * COUNT(c.customer_id), 2) AS total_revenue
FROM (
SELECT DISTINCT vendor_id, product_id, original_price
FROM vendor_inventory
) AS vi
CROSS JOIN (
SELECT DISTINCT customer_id
FROM customer
) AS c
JOIN vendor AS v
ON vi.vendor_id = v.vendor_id
JOIN product AS p
ON vi.product_id = p.product_id
GROUP BY v.vendor_name, p.product_name
ORDER BY v.vendor_name, p.product_name;


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -145,7 +225,12 @@ It should use all of the columns from the product table, as well as a new column
Name the timestamp column `snapshot_timestamp`. */
--QUERY 9


CREATE TABLE product_units AS
SELECT
*,
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS snapshot_timestamp
FROM product
WHERE product_qty_type = 'unit';


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -155,7 +240,22 @@ Name the timestamp column `snapshot_timestamp`. */
This can be any product you desire (e.g. add another record for Apple Pie). */
--QUERY 10


INSERT INTO product_units (
product_id,
product_name,
product_size,
product_category_id,
product_qty_type,
snapshot_timestamp
)
VALUES (
999,
'Apple Pie',
'10 inch',
1,
'unit',
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
);


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -167,7 +267,13 @@ This can be any product you desire (e.g. add another record for Apple Pie). */
HINT: If you don't specify a WHERE clause, you are going to have a bad time.*/
--QUERY 11


DELETE FROM product_units
WHERE product_id = 999
AND snapshot_timestamp = (
SELECT MIN(snapshot_timestamp)
FROM product_units
WHERE product_id = 999
);


--END QUERY
Expand All @@ -191,7 +297,23 @@ Finally, make sure you have a WHERE statement to update the right row,
When you have all of these components, you can run the update statement. */
--QUERY 12


ALTER TABLE product_units
ADD current_quantity INT;

UPDATE product_units
SET current_quantity = (
SELECT COALESCE(
(SELECT quantity
FROM vendor_inventory
WHERE vendor_inventory.product_id = product_units.product_id
ORDER BY market_date DESC
LIMIT 1),
0
)
)
WHERE product_units.product_id IN (
SELECT product_id FROM product_units
);


--END QUERY
Expand Down