My Journey Through Data

Hello everyone! This is a very different post from the data science posts I usually make on this blog, but I wanted to make it anyway. Yesterday I got the chance to perform at the Make-A-Wish Benefactor Concert with my band. I played the drums, and the experience was amazing. I wanted to share some photos from the event. We performed Let Down by Radiohead and Selfless by The Strokes. Connecting this to this data science blog, working with my band to perform has taught me a lot about teamwork and perseverance. For me, playing music in a band is fundamentally different from any other collaborative initiative, group project, or any task that involves the work of many people. I've been in bands for years now, having played the drums for over 7 years, and every time I notice how each musician in the band needs to be on the exact same wavelength and timing; they need to be able to read what each person is thinking. Achieving it means tapping into a private radio frequency that connects a...

Hello Everyone! I wanted to jump on here and talk about an article I read from the Center of American Progress (CAP) titled In the First Year, President Trump’s Tariffs Have Cost Small-Business Importers $306,000 on Average by Michael Negron, Mimla Wardak, and Kennedy Andara. In it, they discuss statistics they calculated using reliable sources on recent tariff policies affecting American small businesses. It is important to note that CAP is a left-leaning progressive journal that is not peer-reviewed. Given this, it can be assumed that the article may be biased. However, the data they present is reliably sourced and doesn't seem to have been tampered with to advance a position the CAP may wish to advance. Figure 1 from the article displays the impact of tariff policies They note that Small-Business Importers are paying $306,000 more per year on average since "Liberation Day" last year, April 2nd. They also mention the Federal Reserve’s Small Business Credit Survey, wher...

Hello Everyone! I recently had the opportunity to present to the Board of the Brookline Chamber of Commerce, where I discussed my research, my work through BrooklineBusiness.com Inc, and my future goals. If you're following my blog, much of what I discussed is covered in my project series. If you are interested, you can review it to learn more. Thank you to Christopher Mutty for believing in this and for giving me this opportunity. I am excited to use the feedback I received to further deepen my understanding of local business needs. Thank you, Dad, for taking the photos.

     Hello Everyone!      I recently watched another Ted Talk titled  “The human insights missing from big data,” by Tricia Wang, and wanted to write about what I thought about it. In her talk, as the title suggests, she discusses how big data cannot do justice to the task of predicting patterns, and that human insight (or what she calls "thick data") combined with quantifiable data will elevate the performance of companies and nonprofits, making them more profitable and more robust in the face of the future.  What Wang Discusses In 2009, Wang took up a research role at Nokia, when the company was dominating the emerging markets of the cellphone industry. Wang talks about her experience in an urban slum in China, where she spent years selling dumplings to construction workers, learning about the kids' habits, and gathering quantifiable data on the population. Piecing together all she had learned, she discovered something the wide array of Nokia's ...

Hello everyone! I recently watched a great Ted Talk by Mallory Freeman titled "Your company's data could help end world hunger." In it, she describes her experiences in optimizing trade routes to reduce food costs and, consequently, feed more people. How did she do this? She used data to build a model that identifies the optimal route for food. Freeman's accomplishments are built on data. Without it, she wouldn't be able to make a model to feed thousands more individuals. She is a firm believer that "information visibility drives efficiency." So she proposes three advancements that would benefit humanitarian organizations, tailored to how companies share and manage their internal data and analytics teams. Companies should: Share data with humanitarian organizations Lend their data scientists/decision scientists who can clean and model data Share their new innovations/technologies to allow for more data collection Freeman closes her talk discu...

Hello everyone!  My experience in the Coding School National High School Research Program has concluded, and I've completed my research on the impact of cut, color, clarity, and carat weight on a diamond's overall value. I'd also like to extend a special thank you to The Coding School and my mentor, Sujay Shetty, for all the fantastic guidance; your help made this possible. Why I Did This Project  I wanted to explore product pricing and how items could be priced based on their key characteristics. While I didn't immediately think diamonds would be my topic of choice, it became fascinating once I delved deep into the subject. My dataset, sourced from Kaggle, has over 50,000 entries, making EDA incredibly worthwhile for uncovering trends. As I delved deeper into the data, my curiosity only grew, and h ere's  what I discovered .  What I Found Using methods described in my paper, I found that around 90% of level changes for the 3Cs significantly affected price; however,...