Hi there! I’m Matt. To the left is a picture of Mount Fuji, captured during my travels through Japan. Mount Fuji has been the subject of many significant works of art (Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, for instance). In many ways it is the ideal subject, infinitely patient, beautiful, static against a constantly fluctuating backdrop of weather and seasons.
When I’m not admiring nature and art, I am working with data. In some ways analyzing data is like drawing Mount Fuji. A data analyst recognizes a subject (structured collection of data points) behind clouds of interference (noise) and approaches that subject with a new way of seeing (statistical tools) to extract meaning (insights). An insight is a nugget of a bigger idea, from which the artist delivers value in the form of an evocative picture, and the analyst delivers value through visualizations, reports, recommendations, and statistical models.
If you can’t tell, I have a deep fondness for data, and in particular for statistics and machine learning, which are the tools that guide me through the mist toward structure and meaning. I find it especially thrilling to implement statistical ideas through code and neat data analyses. I like to write about my favourite projects and discoveries. You can find some of that here. I also make music on the side – you can find that here.