Student experiences

I have asked several of my former students who have taken data analytics courses with me for feedback on their experiences. Their lightly-edited responses are below.

What are you doing and what are your future plans?

I am currently working as a data scientist intern in a startup data-driven research company called Global AI in New York City. My main responsibility is to wrangle data, create data visualizations and apply statistical or financial models for some projects. We are intended to extract business or financial value out of "dark data", which are provided by our clients. I treat this year of working as an acceleration for me to enter the data industry. I also plan to study in a master of business analytics program next year to strength my coding ability and business skills. – Zhe W. '19

I’m working at JPMorgan's Hong Kong location as a data analyst. For the future, I'm going to finish my graduate degree and want to have my own company one day, mainly dealing with databases and market predictions. – Scott L. '19

I'm now on my gap year. So I’ve been doing an internship in my hometown, working with ad measurement, pricing, and consumer demand modeling. – Anon '20

I am working as a Research Associate at U. Michigan's Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics (RSQE). My work includes developing/upgrading forecasting models and conducting economic impact analyses. In the future, I plan to go back to graduate school and pursue a PhD. – Tina D. MS '20

I accepted a full-time position at the Anderson Economic Group as a Senior Analyst for Data Science. – Alston D. MS '21

I work as a Business Analyst for a PR Agency. I use programs such as Domo, Google Data Studio, Sprinklr, and Brandwatch to create dashboards and visualizations. Down the line, I would love to work more with Python/R/Tableau to dive deeper into the data and take control of projects in my own way, ask my own questions and generate results. I want to become a Data Scientist and work with AI and Machine Learning. – Devan J. '20

I am currently working as a Research Assistant at the Federal Reserve Board. My current plan is to continue into a research-based graduate program after my time at the Fed. – Bennett S. '21

I have been in the interview process with a consumer insights firm in Chicago and am using the skills learned in this course to navigate the case study they handed off to me. It's a huge dataset of consumer shopping data and the client who wants to know if they should increase production and promotion of their beer variety packs and if they are a good indicator of future purchases. – Anon '22

I have spent two years as an econometrician at GHD, an environmental consulting firm, creating machine learning models to solve environmental problems. I created models to find out which water delivery pipes are more likely to contain lead so the city of Buffalo can replace them. I have also assisted in improving equity and access to services by using census and environmental data to identify locations in cities that are potentially underserved. I plan to do a data science masters to dive deeper into the world of machine learning. – Varun P. MS '21

I work as a research analyst in the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. My research focuses mainly on the intersection between racial equity and housing finance, and I look a lot at different ways in which historically underserved people and communities access and preserve homeownership, credit, and capital. My day-to-day is a mix between data work — cleaning, analysis, summarizing results, and visualization — using a lot different sources, both public and private, and writing — I work on longer-style reports and papers as well as shorter blogs for different audiences that are more digestible. I hope to continue towards a career of research for public good, with a focus on racial equity in wealth and opportunity. I hope to pursue a Ph.D. in public policy or a similar field to grow as a researcher, analyst, and thinker in this space. – Amalie Z. '21

I am currently serving as an investigator at the Korea Consumer Agency, primarily engaged with the International & Domestic Cooperation Team. My work focuses on building cooperative systems with international bodies and partnering with domestic organizations dedicated to consumer protection. Looking forward, I aim to deepen my knowledge in international consumer rights and pursue advanced studies in international economics to enhance my professional capabilities. – Jae Hoon L. MS '21

What skills have you found most useful? Any surprises?

Python is the main language I am using. Sometimes we will also write SQL to manage data. To be more specific, I mainly use pandas to wrangle data, and matplotlib or plotly to do data visualizations. In my current position, I consider skills to read and apply different functional packages are important, so it would be very helpful to establish a strong coding background. Another important skill is self-learning. Not all companies offer training to their employees, especially startups, so it is crucial to show your self-learning skills to your boss. – Zhe W. '19

Well, I was surprised by the Python language which you teach us the most at class. I was doubting myself before I went to JPM since Python is the only CS language I learned from school, but when I get there, I found that Python can help me deal with 80% of my work. Most people there are using Python as their main language to analyze the data. – Scott L. '19

I used Python to process data with many variables since there are many features in advertising data, and...to aggregate and compare several datasets. I used python to select variables in the modeling process through visualization and many other approaches. It is extremely useful when the datasets are large and wouldn’t be able to be opened by excel. – Anon '20

My knowledge of python and R combined with my econometrics background has been the most useful for my job. Additionally, learning how to carry out research for class projects (even if it wasn't extensive) helped me transition into a full-time researcher. – Tina D. MS '20

[T]he course project was instrumental in many of my econ consulting interviews—even more than the 706 paper. A lot of employers were looking for candidates who could create visualizations that precisely matched the ideas they were trying to convey, and were able to justify every little choice they made while generating plots. – Alston D. MS '21

One of the skills I have found useful in work is being able to be open-minded. I am constantly put in a situation where I am not familiar with all the jargon or programs that we use to generate solutions. Much of what data work is, is the ability to effectively research and figure out a way around your obstacles and that is something I believe I've gotten better at with experience. – Devan J. '20

Data wrangling, cleaning, and visualization skills have been far and away the most useful skills for my position. Real-world data are never as clean as the model datasets used in a course, and you have to be ready to sift through a lot of missing or incorrect values when preparing a dataset for analysis. Once that dataset has been prepared, being able to quickly and effectively visualize it is worth a thousand emails back and forth with your coworkers. – Bennett S. '21

The most useful skills I’ve found are the ability to do statistical programming in Python, as well as be able to tell a good story with your results. – Varun P. MS '21

Being comfortable working with large datasets and unafraid to explore new ones since I know the principles of data cleaning, analysis, of visualization is a huge skill for me. I learned Python in the Econ 570 class but I mostly use R at work (which I was able to learn very quickly because of my background in Python and the similarities between the two). I would say that Econ 570 made me realize how much of coding and analytic work is about knowing the capability of a platform, and then searching online and asking coworkers about how to execute when learning new skills as opposed to having all of the knowledge that you need upfront — I am constantly improving as an analyst and building my skillset. The other skill that is very useful for me is for every line of code I write/analysis I run, I try to think about "why" and "what it tells me" — this was advice I got from a supervisor during an internship. I think when working with large data, it is really easy to get lost in the cleaning and analysis process, but I try to consider why I am cleaning a dataset in a certain way, what information a summary gives me, or why I am running a certain type of regression and I'll sometimes even write it out in a comment to ground the work. – Amalie Z. '21

The ability to use Python for data visualization has been unexpectedly beneficial, especially in enhancing the clarity and effectiveness of my reports. While I do not use Python extensively, applying it to create graphs with Matplotlib has proven essential for summarizing complex data visually, making it more digestible for various stakeholders. – Jae Hoon L. MS '21

How has your economics and data/statistics training been useful in the "real world?"

My quantitative training provides me with a solid background to learn faster than others in the data industry. When I was assigned to a different project, I could easily discuss with my group members about models they were using, without searching on Wikipedia for: "What is p value in statistics and why it is useful?" A strong quantitative training background also makes you professional and authoritative in the data industry. – Zhe W. '19

The real world is always connecting with data, and statistics knowledge helps us build a bridge between them. I find that the most interesting thing I can apply from what I learned to my work is definitely the data visualization. Making useful data plots in business is always helpful for strategic planning which creates profits for the companies with accurate and scientific approaches. Specifically, mapping the data can always surprise your boss, lol. – Scott L. '19

One of my projects measured advertising effectiveness through A/B tests, and it contains calculating confidence levels and confidence intervals of conversion lift. All the knowledge I used in this project are highly correlated with my economic and statistical training. – Anon '20

Everything I did as part of the training—from learning advance economic theory and multiple programming languages to working with different types of data (especially time-series)—has helped me at RSQE. I apply my training to the real world all day, every day. – Tina D. MS '20

Economics hasn't been that useful for me because the work I do is more geared towards statistical analysis so more econometrics. I analyze trends and regressions and create reasonings and claims to back up the way the data is trending. I hope as I move forward in my career, statistical analysis will be more prevalent. – Devan J. '20

Big data and statistics are seeming to only become more and more important in the "real world" and having such a skillset makes you much more valuable than an otherwise identical candidate. For research and economic policy, a strong statistical background is almost a requirement. My economic training has also been very useful when analyzing an existing economic literature and understanding trends in data. However, I see more general utility in my statistical training. – Bennett S. '21

It has led me to be able to perform analysis and create new measures for various datasets and solve new and novel problems. I was able to use statistics to determine which water meters were likely underreporting their water consumption as well as create measures for equity between city areas, both problems for which there was no preexisting framework for me to make use of. – Varun P. MS '21

My undergraduate training in economics and data/statistics has been invaluable in my work. Having strong quantitative skills and data experience definitely helped me get my job and hit the ground running — in my first month, I was running regressions for a blog that I proposed and was able to interface with senior staff confidently and ask them content-based questions, as opposed to basic methods questions. I feel like my classes and experiences gave me a big leg up in my work. But more generally, I work on housing issues, which can be controversial and emotional — a home is where one lives and it contributes so much to the opportunities one will have throughout life — and my training in economics helps me tease out the positive facts from the normative feelings that I or others have about the problems that we study. – Amalie Z. '21

My training in economics and statistics is invaluable for analyzing consumer trends and assessing policy impacts. This analytical foundation allows me to approach consumer protection issues with a data-driven mindset, ensuring our strategies are supported by robust data. Even minimal use of Python has improved my ability to present our findings, aiding in clearer, more effective communication of complex information. – Jae Hoon L. MS '21