I am the gardener-in-chief of Dataviz.Garden. What brought me here?
First... a need to understand quantitative data a bit more. āā Wait, who says "quantitative" these days? All data is quant, isn't it?
Well, no, certainly not in the time-space where my analytical training began. It was European social science of some years back.
We had nothing butĀ scorn for American political scientists trying to answer questions such as "does democracy bring peace to the world" by feeding their formal mathematical models with who-knows-what.
But then in more practical field of political and conflict analysis, I began to see the utility of structured data, even in answering more complex questions of ubercomplex social reality.
I finally understood the "qual vs quant debate" is actually just a False qual vs quant dichotomy.
Thus, I developed the desire to learn a new skill: crunching and shaping datasets into something insightful and pleasing. This garden nurtures some of the notes taken on this path.
At this point I am absorbing everything I can in the field but over time the focus on my main interests, that is conflict data and football analytics, should become apperent.
I very much like how multi-disciplinary doing dataviz is. Basically all these skills are useful:
analytical and critical thinking;
data crunching;
coding;
graphic design;
story-telling.
Plus, there is a science about data viz, which I also enjoy reading.