About Me

How I got into Data Science

I’m an aerospace engineer with 11 years of experience working as a design engineer at Rolls-Royce. Throughout my career I’ve demonstrated an aptitude for solving engineering problems with computer programming.

In 2018 I earned a certificate in Data Analytics from Purdue University, where I learned to use R and then applied it to a variety of projects at Rolls-Royce. In 2019 I completed DataCamp’s Data Science with Python (my statement of accomplishment) career track. I’ve created this website to showcase the Python projects I’ve undertaken since completing Datacamp’s courses.

Prior Computer Science Interests

I have been interested in computer science since I was first introduced to it in high school. It came from a friend showing me how to write programs in our TI graphing calculators. I ended up publishing some my programs at TICalc.org, where my work has been downloaded thousands of times. I also took a programming class in Q-Basic (a DOS language).

At the Ohio State University I was involved in a robotics competition. My responsibility in my team was to program our robot using a language called interactive C. In subsequent years I also loved learning the MATLAB programming language. For fun I wrote a MATLAB program which would solve Sudoku puzzles. In addition a friend introduced me to web development, which led me into making my own personal blogging website using xhtml called MovableType. This entailed writing HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL. After several years of maintaining the site, I took it down because I had grown tired of writing content.

Working fulltime at Rolls-Royce, I taught myself Excel VBA early in my career because no other programming language was readily available to all engineers at that time. This enabled me to write several applications, such as creating part number family tree figures and making movie animations of thermo-mechanical deflections.

In 2014 I began to build a robot which could mow my grass because I wanted a challenge that keep developing my computer science skills. This project taught me C for Arduino and Linux Bash scripting, as well a little Python. The robot uses an Arduino micro controller to drive the motors, to monitor motor speeds with PID control, to monitor switches and invisible dog fence sensors. The robot also has a NVidia Jetson TK1 computer board running Ubuntu and Robotic Operating System. This enabled robot telemetry to be recorded and shared via a wireless router, and to drive it with an Xbox controller. This project was set aside in 2018 when I began taking classes in Data Science.

University Math Courses

• Undergraduate (at The Ohio State University):
  • Calculus I, II & III
  • Linear Algebra
  • Numerical Methods
  • Ordinary & Partial Differential Equations
• Graduate (at Purdue University):
  • Advanced Mathematics for Engineers I & II
  • Multidisciplinary Design Optimization
  • Univariate Statistics with R

Programming Languages

• Proficient in:
  • R & Rmarkdown
  • Python & Jupyter notebooks
  • Matlab
  • SQL
  • Excel VBA
  • C for Arduino
• Familiar with:
  • HTML
  • CSS