"Hello World!"
Who am I?
Well, I was born and raised in Jackson, a small town in West Tennessee, and I’ve been living in East Tennessee for the past four years! I recently graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in December of 2019 with a 3.3 GPA, and a Bachelor’s in Actuarial Science. My friends and family would say I’m a hobbiest, and it’s probably because I much rather be making something, or learning about something new rather than be sitting on the couch watching TV. From researching, to fishing, to studying up on the latest tech, to leatherworking and laser cutting, I love to do it all!
Why Data Science?
As a young child, I was always interested in how you can apply math to solve everday problems, and my favorite subjects throughout college were statistics, operations research, matrix theory, and calculus. I spent my junior year in college as an undergraduate researcher working under my Operations Research professor, and that’s when I fell in love with research. I discovered data science soon after graduation as I was desparetly seeking a career path that endorsed continual learning and research. In data science, you’re given the opportunity to research an array of topics, and you get to dig into real world data every day; it also combines my four favorite branches of mathematics, so for me, it was a no-brainer.
What is the purpose of this site?
After confirming that this is the field I want to be in, I knew that I’d first need to learn how to code. So, in early January of 2020, I wrote my first line of code. I started by taking two open online courses from UC Berkely, but I soon realized that the quickest way I’d learn how to write code would be by using it to research topics that I’m interested in. Thus, I created this web page as a platform to host my journey of learning Python, and data science.
As I’ve been on this self-taught journey of learning how to code, I’ve realized that it’s much harder than people like to make it out to be. With the massive amount of readily available information that can be found on the web, it can often feel like trying to drink from a fire hose. Although I do want this website to reflect some of my technical abilities, I aim for my posts to be honest representations of my progress in coding & data science. I take my projects very seriously, but I want them to be easy and fun to read, regardless of who’s reading them. They’re not meant to be academic-grade research papers!