My Journey Through Data

Hello everyone! Last summer, one of the first topics I wrote about on this blog was tariffs and their impact on small businesses in Brookline. I collected data from local businesses to better understand how rising costs and supply issues were actually affecting them. Now, tariffs have become part of a much larger conflict between the United States and Canada. The U.S. has imposed 50% tariffs on some Canadian products after trade talks between the two countries broke down, and Canada has announced retaliatory tariffs of its own. Beyond the economic effects, I found it interesting to look at how different news sources described the exact same conflict. So, I looked at three articles covering the issue: one center source, one left-leaning source, and one right-leaning source. The Economist: The Pressure on Canada Article: The Costs of Defying Donald Trump Are Mounting for Canada This article mainly focuses on Canadian issues that impacted the trade talks between the United States and Can...

 Hello everyone! I'm about a month into Stanford's Summer Session, where I am taking Principles of Data Science with Professor Alexander Dekhtyar and Introduction to Applied Statistics with Professor Madeline Louise Schroth-Glanz. So far, the experience has been incredible not only because of the amazing classes I'm taking but also because of the people I have met. Everyone here is so supportive and hardworking. I've never been among so many driven, intelligent people who, even in high school, have such specialized knowledge in their interests. When I speak to each person here, I can see how much learning means to them, and that pushes me to be an even better version of myself.  Of course, the learners I have met here are amazing, but the classes are, too. In Principles of Data Science, we have begun learning machine learning algorithms that we will focus on for the remainder of the quarter. We are doing K-Nearest Neighbors now, but later we will learn about unsuperv...

 Hello everyone! I wanted to hop on here and discuss research I've been doing that I've titled "Digital Technology Adoption in American Small Businesses: Why Adoption Does Not Always Lead to Improved Performance." I have the amazing opportunity to work and be mentored by Dr. Larisa Ozeryansky, who holds an MPH, an MSIPM, and a PhD, and is currently a Teaching Assistant Professor of Public Health at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her unique health lens and experience writing research papers have guided my research into peer-reviewed literature on the barriers to adoption. Although my paper is not yet complete, I still wanted to highlight the main takeaways here early. What I found in 30+ peer-reviewed journal articles on small businesses' adoption of digital tools is that adoption is not the end of the story; much more is necessary afterward to ensure maximum performance gains. Furthermore, strategic planning before adoption drives a firm's ability to ...

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 ...