I’m a data scientist employed by a small firm supporting government and commercial clients in the Maryland / Washington, D.C. region. My academic background is in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. Since finishing my Ph.D. in 2008 (focused on optimization theory for decidedly small data problems), I’ve keenly tracked the Big Data / Data Science explosion, and gradually found myself drawn into it both professionally and as a hobbyist. This blog holds some of the tricks, observations and questions I accumulate.