The movie business is one of the most lucrative and omnipresent forces in the American economy, grossing over ten billion dollars a year in ticket sales alone and providing the backdrop for a celebrity culture that permeates the average American’s daily life. Since the early days of film, movie stars have been the fuel that the movie industry uses to continually churn out content; it was not uncommon for early actors to be in a dozen films per year. Nowadays, due to the longer production times associated with big-budget movies, even the most ambitious and active stars can barely fit in four or five films a year … and that’s only if they are in demand enough to get the offers.

Hi everyone. We’re here today to talk about something very serious. There’s this social media network called Twitter where people write short messages to the world. The sentiments of these messages are sometimes helpful, sometimes hurtful, sometimes obvious, and sometimes obviously misguided.

During the first week of class at Metis, the rest of the cohort and I had the pleasure of being overwhelmed by a rapidly approaching deadline. Our first project was for a (fictional) organization called WomenTechWomenYes, whose goal is to increase the participation of women in technology and to build awareness and reach for the company. WTWY was looking for help placing members of their street team at subway entrances in New York City, whose purpose is to find individuals interested in attending a gala in the early summer. We teamed up in groups of four to tackle this first project.

Greetings blogosphere.

Within you will find my own recounting of my experiences and experiments in data science. But before we get to all that excitement, first I’ll tell you a little about who I am.