Introduction I recently became a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Trusted Tester, after completing an 80 hour training program and passing two exams. Whew! It’s rigorous but was a great introduction to the world of accessibility and I am happy to be able to complete web audits and assist organizations in improving their accessibility. (Also,…
Keokuk County Redistricting
Introduction Every 10 years we complete the US Census. After that, the various Statehouses (and Congress) redraw their district maps with the goal of keeping approximately the same number of people in each district. Depending on who you listen to, they may also try to gerrymander in favor of themselves or against their opponent. In…
Eastern University MS in Data Science 2022 Review
Introduction I recently finished the MS in Data Science at Eastern University. This is a 30-credit program that is designed to be taken part-time and finished in 10 or 20 months (depending on whether you take 2 courses or 1 at a time.) The program uses accelerated 7-week courses and has 6 terms per year…
DTSC-691 Example Project Proposal: Predicting Nonprofit Collapse Using IRS Data
Introduction At Eastern University’s Master of Science in Data Science Capstone course (DTSC-691), you are required to write up a proposal for a data science project. I actually evaluated several ideas before deciding on the one that I went with. One of those ideas I carried as far as writing a proposal and doing the…
Using Pandas to Iterate Through a List of Files
Introduction For my Eastern University capstone, I had a few project ideas. One of them involved analyzing IRS XML data to predict nonprofit failure. Although I didn’t end up going with that idea (because so many of the records contain data quality issues), I did end up writing a number of data cleaning functions to…