An unusual journey to exciting data mining applications

Abstract

I found my way into this field haphazardly. There are academics with the training and graduate work that put them on the path toward being data scientists. But as an undergraduate, and even in graduate school, I did not know what data mining was, partially because the field was too new to have made it to the schools where I studied. However, my passion for statistics and for solving problems, as well as a fortunate series of jobs, led me into this field. Rather than approach it academically, I have used data mining for many, many projects that have solved real-life problems.