Q So just quickly, I mean, so, working on this project, you sort of train yourself, or were you, like, apprenticed into it, or?
A So, yeah, so for, for my background, um, these, I think these mics are cutting in and out, and so I apologize if it's hard to hear me. Um, for my background, originally it was pure math. Um, I got very interested in data visualization, actually, originally. Uh, I read some Tufti books, and a couple other things, and some Tufti, actually, and got really into this, the, the idea of, uh, um, visualizing data. Um, and then started working with some Faculty at the university that I was at, and working with some other people doing work in journalism in Chicago, um, and I spent, I don't know, three or four months after I finished college, ah, I left early, and then spent three or four months just finding people with interesting problems and, and trying to, to offer what I could, and, um, ah, I did some work on comparing the, um, effect of Public transit cuts in Chicago, sort of looking at the, the spread of access in different neighborhoods before and after, and trying to relate it to race and class and other things like that, and that got picked up by the New York Times, and so I got to write an article with them, which was a, a really great opportunity, um, and just basically collaborated with lots of people who had problems, who needed somebody to do the work for it, um, and built up a portfolio that way, Of things that I had done that I could demonstrate that I had actually accomp…
AI assessment note: “read some Tufti books, and a couple other things... built up a portfolio that way”