Introduction

I am a graduating master student in the MS Public Policy and Management program at Carnegie Mellon University – Heinz College. From my time at Heinz, I’ve developed an affinity for programming, analysis, and data viz in R. Programming allows us to clean the very messy data available in the world. Analysis gives empirical insight into social phenomena. Data viz assists in telling a story and sharing interesting findings.

The purpose of this blog is two fold. 1) I would like to share some of my “products” and the steps I took to create them.  2) I also reveal some of my best practices and tips for data cleaning (things that I have spent a lot of time contemplating). My sincere hope is that everyone enjoys my findings and other fledgling students can use my blog as a resource. I am still learning all the ins and outs of coding and I wish to share my experience.