The new semester has just begun, and with that comes a new batch of promising Master of Science in Data Science students. To celebrate our incoming class, we decided to talk with five of the incoming students, to hear about their backgrounds, their interests, and their goals for the future. We’ll be interviewing one student each day of this week, and today we’ll be talking with Eduardo Fierro Farah.
What drew you to the Master of Science in Data Science program?
After I finished my undergraduate studies, I began working at a data center solutions company called Data4. I worked there for four years, and after learning the basics of data analytics, I decided I wanted to expand my knowledge in the field of data science.
What did you study during your undergraduate education?
I double majored in Economics and Political Science at Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), in Mexico City.
Can you talk about some of the research projects that you’ve been working on?
I completed two theses projects during my undergraduate studies: one in economics, and one in political science. Both dealt with violence in Mexico.
For my thesis in Political Science, I wanted to explore the correlation between domestic violence and homicide rates, to determine how the different characteristics of a given location can explain this relation.
For my thesis in Economics, I used a game theory model to explore homicide rates in Mexican municipalities, and I wanted to determine what drives certain municipalities to become a consistently violent community, or a consistently nonviolent community.
Of your fall courses, which one are you most excited about?
Intro to Data Science. Although I have a general idea of what I’m getting into, I’m excited to learn about all of the applications, possibilities, and limits within the field of data science.
Within the field of data science, there are many different disciplines, and an even wider set of possible applications. Can you talk about the subsets of data science, or the data science applications that you’re most interested in perusing?
As an economist, and as a political scientist, I am particularly interested in the applications that data science has in these fields. Political campaigns, political speeches, and public opinion have always interested me, and I want to use natural language processing as a way of analyzing public policies. Data science also has some really interesting applications in the field of micro-economics, particularly when studying inequality and poverty.
But I also have a strong passion for sports, and would be excited about the possibility of using data science to analyze soccer, football, or formula one racing.