Who am I and Why I joined Zipfian Academy

About Me 

I'm a Vietnamese American who came to the United States over 20 years ago with the rest of my family.  I grew up in Tacoma, Washington and spent the last few years of high school in North Lauderdale, Florida.  I joined the United Stats Navy as a Nuclear Electrican's Mate and become a Petty Officer 3rd Class before being discharged for medical reasons.  After leaving the military, I used my education benefits to attend Highline Community College, a 2 year school just south of Seattle.  I actually studied Engineering and Physics but changed to Computer Science when I transferred to the University of Washington Tacoma where I then graduated with my Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science and Systems.  

I'm currently attending the Zipfian Academy data science program in San Francisco.  

You can find me on LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter.  

Why did I join the Zipfian Program?

All of my academic interests are encompassed by data science...

I was originally interested in operations research, industrial engineering, and artificial intelligence. I loved the mystery and practical applications of artificial intelligence while operations research and industrial engineer tugged on my life mission of improving and developing better systems. 

The intersection or collage of all of these fields is data science.  I love coding, I love optimizing and engineering, and I love designing and developing intelligent systems.  Ergo, I love data science.

My background sets me up to do data science...

Most people believe statisticians or data analysts are the most closes careers to data scientists but I disagree.  I believe data scientists are simply engineers who design and develop abstract products.  A software engineer designs or improves software, a Civil Engineer designs or improves buildings, and a data scientist designs or improves intelligent systems.  The statistical models that a data scientist crafts are in themselves the products that we design.

I studied engineering for the first two years of my college life.  Most of what I studied was domain specific.  Mechanics and circuits but others were more general skills like using computational methods to approximate differential equations, using mathematical models to run simulations, and multiple integrals and using Excel for data analysis.  

The other side of my education was in Computer Science where I learned about algorithms and even more about computation.  I loved coding and will never work in a field that doesn't require it.