This is my public portfolio for the Telling Stories with Data class at CMU!

Hi, I am Xiaojun Ma, a second year Master of Public Policy Management - Data Analytics student at Heinz College. This is my final semester at Heinz :)

Before joining Heinz, I was studying Economics in China, with my experiences mostly in the financial industry and economic research. During my undergrad, I realized how important data is in today's world. So I came to Heinz right after I graduated from college, eager to learn some practical analytical skills under the general social science background.

During my time in Heinz, I grew a deep interest in data analytics. Learning how to use data for discovering patterns, finding solutions or predicting has been an amazing experience for me, and that drives me to pursue a data science career after I graduate from Heinz.

A fun fact about me - I am a foodie who has a passion to cook, but I am not good at cooking. So I often need to decide on the tradeoff of cooking and enduring my own cooking products. |

I was introduced to this class when I was taking the Data Impact Lab class with Professor Labash in Fall 2019. Back then I was trying to learn more about analytical skills, learn how to solve problems with different tools. Now, after more than a year learning analytical skills, doing projects and internship. I realized that the solving the problem is only half of the job, the other half is delivering and communicating the findings.

The latter half mentioned above is what I am hoping to learn in this class, how to make the findings (visuals) more clear, how to make the findings concise and beautiful, how to make the visuals more persuasive, and how to tell a good story with data.

Assignment 2: Government Debt Visuals

Assignment 3&4: Big Mac Index

Final Project Part I

Final Project Part II

Final Project Part III