Life is crazy. How many of you thought that this level of mass quarantine would actually happen a month ago? The disruption of life at such scale brings a feeling of astonishment to me that everyone is staying in their homes and physically going through the exact same thing.
One of the worse things about this pandemic + now economic downturn is that it prevents us from being socially close to one another. I definitely feel distracted, scared, and evermore addicted to Twitter, but am trying to stay positive and refocus on what matters. I have to remind myself that all of this is outside of my control except for how I respond to it.
A silver lining is that many of us have some extra time to jump into our backlog of things we have always wanted to accomplish now. Whether that's home improvement, a side business, a data science project, etc.., it's a chance to focus ourselves on something we would've pushed off.
For those that are interested in a data science project, here's a few coronavirus projects ideas that don't plot the coronavirus cases in a graph or map. I think in a few months time, we'll start seeing how the pandemic's secondary effects of mass hoarding, daily migration pattern, etc.. have affected our human behavior.
Coronavirus project ideas:
- Track the spread of different sentiments of coronavirus over time by geography. How did people first react to it in the U.S. a month ago versus now? Are suburbs or cities more likely to spread different sentiments of the coronavirus?
- What are the top most sought after items in grocery stores? What are the top items being resold on Craigslist? What are their prices?
- What's the effect of the coronavirus on Airbnb pricing? Are prices going down with demand in certain geographies?
- How are housing and rental markets now affected? Are places like SF and NYC still expensive?
Data science stuff outside of coronavirus
- This week I wrote a blog post titled "Do they want a data scientist...or a yes man". Many data scientist positions are turning into a role to rationalize other people's decisions. If you're a working data scientist, ask yourself, how are decision being made at the company I work at?
- I interviewed Jerry, one of our first Interview Query customers, about his experience getting a job over the past two years from no data science background to Galvanize graduate to now machine learning engineer. Hint, it takes a lot of interviews and determination before breaking into the field!
- The DoorDash data science company guide. If anyone is interested in the take-home challenge, definitely check out our Interview Starter Kit package.