About




I am Mark Roberts

Homebrewer, falafel lover, and (sometimes) runner. I studied Marketing & Entrepreneurship as an undergrad, and I am currently pursuing my Master's Degree in Data Analytics as a full-time student. I am fascinated by the power of data and what it can teach us about the world around us. I created this website to share my analytical explorations. Thanks for joining.

 Feel free to contact me with questions or recommendations for the site.

Popular posts from this blog

Why are people leaving Illinois?

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  Illinois is famous for being one of the very few states in the country with negative population growth.   The goal of this analysis is to i dentify the key reasons for the declining population by extracting  meaningful insights   from unstructured text. The raw text used for this project is in the form of roughly 300,000 news articles and titles scraped from the web that reference Illinois, Chicago, or Springfield. This project was completed in Python & Pyspark with several Natural Language Processing packages. 
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Want to better your odds of winning a TV Elimination show? Win the first Challenge

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In an elimination-style show, how important is it to win the very first challenge? Does winning this challenge better your odds of winning the entire show? While every show is unique, after digging into four different popular elimination-style shows, my answer is a definitive  YES .   To better answer this question, I did a deeper dive into four different elimination style shows: Top Chef, RuPaul's Drag Race, The Bachelor, and the Bachelorette. Top Chef and RuPaul both determine a winner and loser for each episode. The Bachelor and Bachelorette do not have weekly "winners", so I am using the recently added "First Impression Rose" as a proxy for a first episode "winner".  I collected data on each of these shows: 54 seasons total, and 17 of those seasons were won by an individual who won the first challenge, corresponding to a 31% winning ratio. These shows and seasons have an average of roughly 14 contestants per season, so a typical individual has abou...
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Using a Neural Network to Predict Pneumonia From X-Ray Images

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According to the American Lung Association , ' Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs that may be caused by bacteria, viruses, or fungi. The infection causes the lungs' air sacs (alveoli) to become inflamed and fill up with fluid or pus. That can make it hard for the oxygen you breathe in to get into your bloodstream. The symptoms of pneumonia can range from mild to severe, and include cough, fever, chills, and trouble breathing.' Pneumonia Infographic Patients with pneumonia could have the following symptoms: Cough that produces phlegm or sometimes blood Fever Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing Chills or shaking Fatigue Sweating Chest or muscle pain If a person is suspected of having pneumonia, a doctor will begin by asking the patient about their medical history and symptoms. Next will be a physical exam, so the doctor can listen to the patient's lungs. In checking for pneumonia, a doctor will listen for abnormal sounds like crackling, rumbling or wheezing. I...
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