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William B

- Research Program Mentor

Industry expert at Stanford University

Expertise

Data Science, Data Analysis and Software Development with a focus on data reporting and management

Bio

I am an experienced data scientist who is interested in using data to combat inequalities and promote better policy. I also enjoy building software and tools to help people organize, visualize, and analyze data with the goal of effecting political change. For the past five years, I have worked at the intersection of data and politics. I have worked in political polling, election science, and political mobilization/voter registration. When I am not working, I enjoy playing sports (especially basketball), and spending quality time with friends and family.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Using interactive plots/visualizations to convey complicated political trends online

A student could pick a political issue or solution to an issue, find data relating to that topic, and create series of visualizations to display either the extent/ complexity of the issue, or the effectiveness of a potential solution. Data visualizations like interactive maps and plots can draw the attention of wide audience and help the researcher hone in on conveying complicated trends. I would envision the result of this project being a blog post, app or focused website that would raise awareness for an issue or advocated for a solution.

Coding skills

I am great with R, Elixir, Python, and SQL. I also have experiences with other languages like javascript, ruby, and C++

Teaching experience

I have taught programming to four summer interns (who were college students). The interns came in with different experience levels but most were pretty new to programming. I primarily instructed them to use R for data science tasks. I similarly trained a direct report.

Credentials

Work experience

Politech (2021 - Current)
Lead Data Scientist
YouGov (2017 - 2021)
Senior Data Scientist
The Ghana Center For Democratic Development (2016 - 2016)
Research Intern (Summer)
Stanford University (2015 - 2015)
Research Assistant - Inside Iraqi Authoritarianism

Education

Stanford University
BA Bachelor of Arts (2017)
Political Science

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