ITFD alum Charlie Thompson ’14 is an R enthusiast who enjoys “tapping into interesting data sets and creating interactive tools and visualizations.” His latest blog post explains how he used cluster analysis to build a Coachella playlist on Spotify:
“Coachella kicks off today, but since I’m not lucky enough to head off into the California desert this year, I did the next best thing: used R to scrape the lineup from the festival’s website and cluster the attending artists based on audio features of their top ten Spotify tracks!”
Read the full blog post on his website
Charlie shares a bit of his background on his website:
Currently an Analytics Specialist at a tech startup called VideoBlocks, I create models of online customer behavior and manage our A/B testing infrastructure. I previously worked as a Senior Data Analyst for Booz Allen Hamilton, where I developed immigration forecasts for the Department of Homeland Security. I also built RShiny applications for various clients to visualize trends in global disease detection, explore NFL play calling, and cluster MLB pitchers. After grad school I worked as a Research Assistant in the Macroeconomics Department of Banc Sabadell in Spain, measuring price bubbles in the Colombian housing market.
I have an MS in International Trade, Finance, and Development from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and a BS in Economics from Gonzaga University. For my Master’s thesis I drafted a policy proposal on primary education reform in Argentina, using cluster analysis to determine the optimal regions to implement the program. I also conducted research in behavioral economics and experimental design, using original surveys and statistical modelling to estimate framing effects and the maximization of employee effort.