Hi! I’m Koji, one of the PODS fellows this summer. Originally from Tokyo and New York, I’ve just finished my joint honours degree in Political Science and Economics.
I’ve always been a bit of a data geek – the sort of person who would track his favourite music or sports teams on spreadsheets – and being a visual learner, I’ve always tried to represent data in the most visually-appealing way possible. However, I’ve always relied on Google Sheets, which had its limitations. Additionally, I’ve always been enthusiastic about learning human languages – French, Japanese, German, and a bit of Italian – but I’ve always shied away from learning a programming language.
So in many ways, what PODS has taught me – a solid foundation in a programming language for data analysis and visualization – was exactly what I needed, and complemented my existing interests really well. (I’ve already started using these new tricks I learned, like visualization packages in R and web scraping, in my personal research projects about elections and public transit – because, as my friends can attest, I have really odd hobbies.) Not only were the instructor, TA, and course material excellent, it was a privilege to go through this experience with a truly brilliant, inquisitive, delightful, and kind-hearted cohort (whose blog posts you’ve been following throughout the summer!).
In addition to the bootcamp, I was assigned to intern at Plotly, a data-visualization firm in the Mile End. There, I was put with the documentation team – who write explanations for the packages that Plotly codes – and expanded the documentation pages for the ggplotly package. This meant creating example visualizations for each function in the set. It was an excellent opportunity to explore a wide variety of datasets (I was given considerable freedom about what I could use for the examples) and to expand the types of data-visualization I feel comfortable with, beyond just points and lines. It was also an excellent way to learn Plotly’s “Dash” package, a way of creating interactive dashboards, and Plotly’s many great interns helped me along the way.
In short, I’m never going to forget PODS, really – every visualization project and every map I make from now on will be the result of the skills and insights I gained over this summer. I’ve thought for a bit that I’d like to work in a journalistic publication that combined explanation with visualization (if you’re reading this, The Economist, please call me), and I’d like to think that, with PODS, I’m one step closer to that.
