A mission statement

November 29, 2017 in about

On the left hand side of this page (or when you click the “About” button), I start with one sentence that gets at why I do many things I do. I love going on adventures and I love learning from data. I think that to adventure means to do much more than to go an exotic locale. To me, an adventure is to find myself somewhere I’ve never been. Sometimes, adventure takes me to the top of yosemite falls, to my local climbing gym, or even around the block.

Chris Friedman

I go on adventures and analyze data. When I’m away from my desk I make beer and build things with wood.

Data Analyst at Drexel University

Philadelphia, PA

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Point-Density Plots - My New Favorite Dot Plot

Sep 9, 2019

A few weeks ago the wonderful RWeekly mailing list introduced me to a new type of plot - the point density plot. Wonderfully, the ability to make this plot has been added to the R community in the form of a new package, ggpointdensity. From the top line description, it’s a cross between a scatter plot and a 2D density plot. The motivation for creating the package and using this new plot is that the points in scatter plots can overlap one another while the alternative density plots lose the resolution given by plotting indiviudal points.

More SQL - Rocking Out

Aug 8, 2019

I’ve been playing around with the data science projects from codeacademy for a few weeks. First I played with stocks data here and here. Today, I’ll be working through the second [codeacademy data science independant project: Watching the Stock Market] This is a continuation of my work on the codeacademy data science independant project #2: Explore a Sample Database. The database for this project is related to a fictional music store.

Working with stocks: Intermediate and Advanced Challenges

Aug 8, 2019

This is a continuation of my work on the codeacademy data science independant project #1: Watching the Stock Market. My first post on the subject explores how I put gathered the stock data. In my second post, I explored the data using basic sql queries (and put my sql code out into the world for the first time!) After completing the basic challenges from my last post on the topic, there are intermediate and advanced challenges too while playing with these stocks data.

Happy Little Accidents

Aug 8, 2019

This morning, I just found out about #tidytuesday and I figured it would be a fun thing to play with. For my first foray into tidytuesday, we have data on Bob Ross’s paintings during his show. The data were compiled by fivethirtyeight and reported here. The data are available here. On the info page for the data, they show how to load the data and give an example of some basic tidying.

Working with stocks: Basic SQL

Jul 7, 2019

This is a continuation of my work on the codeacademy data science independant project #1: Watching the Stock Market. My first post is here. In this project, the basic tasks are: What are the distinct stocks in the table? Query all data for a single stock. Do you notice any overall trends? Which rows have a price above 100? between 40 to 50, etc? Sort the table by price. What are the minimum and maximum prices?

Creating a stocks database

Jul 7, 2019

I just started working on teaching myself sql and after completing the codeacadmey sql lessons, there are links to independant projects. My goal is to work on these independant projects in the coming weeks. To look ahead (and have a place to find them later outside my pocket list) here’s a list to all five I plan on working on: Watching the Stock Market Explore a Sample Database Education & Census Data Home Value Trends Analyze Airfare Data The first project has us working with stock market data.

How often does the Senate Vote In Palindromes?

Jan 1, 2018

Every Friday, five thirty eight comes out with two logic, math, or probability based puzzles - one quick to solve and one that takes a long time to solve. Although I don’t always get a chance to partake, thinking about them is always fun. This week’s quick puzzle related to a problem I’m trying to solve in the office, so I thought I would give this one a try. Taken from their site, the puzzle goes like this:

Importing Social Network Data into R

Dec 12, 2017

In my professional life, I manage and analyze data on a team that studies the social networks surounding children with autism. The purpose of this post is not to discuss that work in depth, but rather to show how to quickly and easily import one type of data I work with into R. For social network analysis, I use the package igraph. The type of data I’m going to talk about iporting today is egocentric network data.

Getting RateBeer Data…Programmatically

Dec 12, 2017

In my last post I showed how using the package httr, You can access the RateBeer API to get information about beers made by a brewery. When I left off, I showed a problem - the API only shows 10 beers at a time. Today, I’m going to show how we can get more beers at once. After that, I’m going to show how we can use the API, rvest, and purrr to get beers from all the brewers around me.

Accessing the RateBeer API with R Using httr

Dec 12, 2017

A few months ago, I was talking with a friend of mine about the idea for this blog and how I wanted to use data science to explore beer. He suggested that I use the blog as well as beer to learn something new about where I live. So I ask, what can beer teach me about Philadelphia? The first thing I need? Data! Oddly enough, it’s actually pretty challenging to get access to high quality, current beer data.