S2E1 - Andrea Jones-Rooy

Half Stack Data Science

In the first episode of season 2, "The Orthogonals", Shaun and David speak to Andrea Jones-Rooy.

Andrea is a social scientist specializing in complexity. She has written a book and several research papers on complex systems, and regularly contributes articles to media outlets on (you guessed it!) complexity — plus data science, international relations, diversity, and uncertainty. She is also a standup comedian and circus performer. The whole thing is confusing, but basically she’ll do whatever it takes to get people to pay attention to social science & complexity. Andrea earned her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

We discussed why you shouldn't do a political science PhD to become a data scientist, how a political science PhD will benefit you in data science if you happen to have one, finishing a PhD thesis in a Thai restaurant, and what skills are missing from most data science courses and what to do about it.