I am thrilled to share that an article I co-authored with Peter Slattery, PhD has been published on the MIT FutureTech website! Titled "What Drives Progress in AI? Trends in Data", we explore the pivotal role data plays in driving advancements in artificial intelligence. From machine learning algorithms to Generative AI, the quality and quantity of data fueling these technologies determine their efficacy and impact.
I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Peter and to contribute to MIT FutureTech's platform and share our insights with fellow AI enthusiasts and industry professionals.
I invite you all to read the full article here: https://futuretech.mit.edu/news/what-drives-progress-in-ai-trends-in-data
Career Changes and more resources
I recently made a career transition, changing full-time jobs for the first time since I graduating. While I’m still going to be a research analyst, I’ve moved from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia to Accenture. My work will now pivot from economic research and monetary policy to a broad array of topics tackled by the Data Science team I joined. I’m looking forward to applying my research and data science skills to this new space and learning everything I can from the talented people I’ll be surrounded by! I’m also hoping the increased focus on applied research will improve the data science methodology I deploy for the articles I write on this website (of which I have not posted any in a while but have about a half dozen currently in various states of completion).
In the meantime, I have written a blog post over on Menti’s website sharing advice from my experience in recruiting for data science-oriented roles. The post is full of resources I picked up along the way and tips given to me from others whom I spoke to or scoured from around the Internet. I wanted to highlight this post in case there are others out there looking to make a job change or trying to break into the data science field. In addition, I’ve written a guide on what data science is and how to break into the field for Menti before - check that out here.
Launching the Econ Grad School Wiki
I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that I still don’t have a new visualization post ready yet. But the good news is that I am launching a new section of the website, which I am calling the “Econ Grad School Wiki”.
Check it out here!
This wiki is intended to be an all-in-one location for finding resources on applying to grad school, doing research, learning how to do research, or any other multitude of advice on how to be successful in the field of economics. As I’m preparing to apply to grad school for economics myself, I’ve come across many resources and websites and frequently wished that they were all collected in one easy-to-access place. While there are some websites out there that do this, most that I’ve come across are either defunct or focused on a specialized topic. So my hope is that this wiki will grow to be all-encompassing (for economics and especially economics graduate school subjects)!
That being said, the wiki is still in its infancy and has lots of room to grow. I plan to continue adding links as I come across them, but I’m sure there are many useful pages that I will miss. So please do send me any websites, links, guides, resources, or any other form of advice that helped you or you think others may find helpful! You can reach me at my email (troded24@gmail.com) or through my social media (which are all linked at the bottom of this page), or feel free to comment on this post.
Hope that this will be the start of what turns out to be a useful resource for many others!
Hiatus, Side Projects, & Updates
Hi all,
To the many, many loyal readers of this website, my lack of posts in the past several months has surely been disappointing. The good news is I have a couple new projects in the works, a mix of discussion on both contemporary events and some more tangential economic topics that I think could make for fun visualizations. The bad news is that it may be slow going for the next couple months with these new posts. I’ve found most of my time recently to be occupied by work, the Bayesian Data Analysis class I’m currently taking at Penn, as well as an exciting volunteer effort I’ve started with some friends called Menti - please check it out!
Menti is a nonprofit effort to provide quick guides and resources to teenagers and young adults on many of the considerations relevant to their age - learning personal finance, developing self-care techniques, recruiting for schools and jobs, and so much more. Our website (linked above) just launched, and I’m excited to continue expanding the resources available on it with the many others devoting their time to helping whatever youth might be in need of it. Please do share our website with anyone who you think may benefit from it, and feel free to send me any thoughts or feedback you’ve got.
Meanwhile, I’ll be splitting my time between this website and my other projects, but promise there are new posts with fresh visualizations coming out soon!
-Tal
Back to work
Hello Readers,
It has been a while since my last post on this site, but I hope to get things started back-up soon. Between completing my undergraduate degree and traveling over the summer, I did not have much time (or ability) to work on any new projects. But, I am now settled into my job and my new home in Philadelphia - and eager to share my ideas and visualizations! I plan to make new posts very soon, and also expand to a more active blog here where I can share more personal thoughts of mine such as interesting links/papers/article I’ve come across or books I am reading.
Besides graduating from UCSD earlier this year, I also reached another milestone: my first paper was officially published! In the summer of 2017, I conducted a project with Professor David Lagakos of the UCSD Economics Department, expanding the existing information on income levels in developing nations. We built the first-ever database of absolute income levels, rather than previously relied-upon (and limited in use) income percentiles, which can have many practical applications for international policy. If you are interested in learning more, check out my paper here in the 2019 edition of The Ohio State University Journal of Politics and International Affairs. Thank you to the JPIA stuff for publishing my paper and making this online version of the journal available!
More to come soon!
Article on NJ Housing Market
Hello readers,
I recently co-authored a short article on trends in the New Jersey housing market that was posted on the Rutgers Center for Real Estate website - find it here. I spent my Summer 2018 as an economic research intern at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and much of my time there was focused on the research and production behind this article. If you are curious about trends in the housing market, how the Great Recession shifted the dynamics of that market, and the increasingly central role financial institutions are playing as home buyers, then this article is definitely for you!