Skill Development Projects
Python has become one of my favorite and best-developed skills for data management, task automation, map creation, and so many other things. In working more with Python, I needed ways to collect user input and design more complex interfaces for my tools. I started learning html and javascript as a solution to my needs and began asking myslef if I should just build a website to more easily access my custom api and data visualization tools. That's the origin of this website which I've coded from scratch myself, and this specific page is the realization of my initial intent to simply house my tools in a more accessible place.
The list of projects below provides some detail on the status of each project, the skills I developed in the process, what originally inspired the project, and what future expansions, enhacements, and upgrades I see for it. As this site was originally intended to help me explore and grow my skills, many parts are unfinished which I leave on display as I continue working on them.
Filter by Skill:
Census Data Tool
Skills Used:
- Python
- Data Manipulation
- Javascript
- SQL
- Web‑Scraping
- Data Manipulation
This project is all about streamlining the process of collecting census data and visualizing it in both spatial and tabular formats. The project makes use of the U.S. Census Bureau's data API to request and download data into a sqlite database.
One of the aspects of this project that advanced my skillset most and of which I'm most proud is the input form at the beginning. I developed the geography table form as some of my first javascript usage. I needed a way to define both a large quantity of geographies as well as a large variety of them (states, counties, tracts, etc.) What I ended up with was a tool that's extendable to accommadate a lot of different needs as the project progresses in the future.
The Inspiration
A lot of my professional work in planning requires census data for demographic analyses. This project was born out of necessity as I need a quick way to download a variety of different ACS variables for differnt geographies very quickly. I started with a set of Python functions I developed to utilize the Census Bureau's data API. But, remebering the arguments for each function, imputing lists of geographies and variables, and stringing the functions together for different uses was still rather annoying. The user interface I've developed as a result is my favorite project to work on and is ever-expanding!
Future Goals
- ACS variable catalog
- Expanded selection of geographies
- Graphical data-exploration
- Geospatial data-exploration
This Website
Skills Used:
- Python
- Javascript
My website is the first web app I've created. It's built using the Flask Python library. And in addtion to creating the app, I've personally writen and developed all of the HTML, CSS, and Javascript code used in the website. The project has been important to me as a gateway to more interactive and accessible tools I can create and use for data analysis.
I am passionate about empowering people to explore data and answer their questions. The internet era has created a great deal of democratization in data and data analysis, and this website is first and foremost my first step in exploring and developing the skills needed to create tools and to share them with potential users.
The Inspiration
This website made use of the skills I learned working on my census data tool. I love to expand my ideas and push them to their natural (and sometimes unnatural) extremes. Once I had developed the user interface for the census data tool, it was a pretty quick leap in my mind to create a basic websit in which to house the tool. Over time, the website has become much more, and I'm very proud of the design, functionality, and content as it's come together.
Future Goals
- Better mobile formatting
- More apps and tools using new datasets
Climate Visuals
Skills Used:
- Python
- Javascript
- SQL
- Interactive Maps
- Data Manipulation
Climate change is here, and it's possible to see those changes. This project is about creating visual comparisons between the 2020 climate normals (30-year averages) and the 2010 normals. The data is sourced from NOAA and details averages for each hour of each day of the year. My main goal with these visuals is to demonstrate the ways in which climate change is affecting various seasons and times of day differently throughout the US.
The first visuals are simple interactive maps using that Leaflet JS library detailing the 2010 and 2020 averages for each available weather station NOAA makes available. I'll be adding different and (hopefully) more interesting visuals as the project progresses.
The Inspiration
I'm a person who enjoys dry and cold weather, so I've spent a good amount of time looking for data to help me locate such places. The website WeatherSpark.com visualizes hourly climate data in unique ways for cities across the globe. One visual in particular, these kind of temperature thumbnail images, inspired this project. Making use of raster math from geospatial analyses, I thought these types of images could display how climate is changing in a comprehensive, yet digestible way.
Future Goals
- Addition of controls to examine multiple datasets and variables
- A tool to create climate comparison thumbnail images similar to WeatherSpark.com (example shown above)
- Implementation of predictive analytic tools to group places experiencing climate change in similar ways
Income Calculator
Skills Used:
- Python
- Excel Automation
- Web‑Scraping
This project was my first non-work, complex python project in which I developed functions and used other aspects of Object-Oriented Programming to perform a task. The functions calculate a person's net pay using federal, state, and some local income tax brackets, information on retirement savings, etc and output the information in a concise Excel workbook. Collecting the tax brackets was a particularly part as I used the BeautfulSoup Python library to web-scrape data for the first time.
The functionality of the project is rather meaningless to me as several online tools do a much better and more comprehensive job. However, I use this project as a snapshot in my past to measure my growth and encourage me to keep working and developing - a kind of "gym selfie" for coding.
File Directory Mapper
Skills Used:
- Python
- Javascript
The directory mapper tool uses the pathlib Python library to record and visualize the structure of a file folder on a PC. The result is an interactive html document with collapsible sections allowing a user to browse and search for names of subfolders and files. The project makes use of some of the javascript, html, and css lessons I learned when I first began the Census Data Tool project.
The output includes clickable and dragable html elements and events that help you navigate and organize data and other documents in a larger project folder. This has been particularly useful in the workplace where I need to make use of organizational structures that former employees had designed and implemented.