Data Project

Scott David Orr

Data Scientist

***** ****** ******* **.

Dumfries, VA 22025-2020

830-***-****, *****@*******.***

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE

Passionate, hard-working social science researcher with over 15 years

of experience in professional research, quantitative analysis, and

statistical software, and strong writing and communication skills

Designed and executed multiple research and consulting projects that asked

and answered novel questions on social and behavioral topics. Prepared

budgets and obtained funding for these projects. In one project on ethnic

identity, integrated quantitative data from four cross-national surveys

conducted in six Eastern European countries, and qualitative field

interviews with leaders in 10 cities of Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine.

Tested hypotheses about causal relationships through statistical analysis,

using R, MATLAB/Octave, and Python programming languages, as well as

applications such as SPSS, NCSS, LISREL, Amos, Mplus, EQS, and gretl.

Cleaned and recoded databases, and analyzed multiple regression, structural

equation, time series, and analysis of variance (ANOVA) models.

Analyzed and applied survey data, and taught students to carry out their

own survey research projects.

Took the initiative to learn data science methods, including machine

learning, clustering, and social network analysis, FORTRAN for scientific

programming, SQL and XML database queries, web scraping, Hadoop and

MapReduce for big data, and Gephi and NetLogo for data visualization.

As a hobby project, conducted a social network analysis of cards and decks

in the game Android: Netrunner, using R to gather data via web-scraping,

and building a map in Gephi of links between cards with statistically

significant pointwise mutual information coefficients.

Created written products on technical issues for academic, military, and

non-profit audiences.

Published 6 articles and presented 6 conference papers.

Briefed clients and provided regular progress reports.

Designed, wrote, and edited an online course on culture for the U.S. Marine

Corps on a tight deadline, as part of a three-person leadership team

directing a group of 20 professionals, including content creators.

Played a lead role in a two-year project to restructure Texas Lutheran

University's political science curriculum, in order to provide graduates

with the quantitative skills they need in the modern workplace.

Operated successfully in multicultural environments, carrying out research

in four foreign countries, teaching a bilingual population, and traveling

on business to Canada, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine.

Traveled for personal reasons to seven other European and Asian countries.

Studied five foreign languages, and used them in research.

Obtained a Secret security clearance (now inactive).

EXPERIENCE

Research Specialist, Association of Community College Trustees, Washington,

DC 7/2014-present

Consulting for community college trustees and presidents.

Designing and executing survey research projects, such as the Pathways to

the Presidency report.

Conducting data analysis using R.

Writing and editing research reports.

Freelance Writer

11/2012-present

Writing The Aspirational Data Scientist

(http://newdatascientist.blogspot.com), a blog for social scientists who

want to become data scientists.

Writing online technical content, including guides to rooting Android

devices.

Operational Culture Social Scientist, ProSol, LLC,

Triangle, VA

5/2013-12/2013

Developed a distance-learning operational culture familiarization course

included in the required professional education of U.S. Marine Corps first

lieutenants and sergeants, as part of the Regional, Culture, and Language

Familiarization program of the USMC's Center for Advanced Operational

Culture Learning (CAOCL) at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

. Wrote the content for a culture general module that will act as the

foundation for Marines to learn about operational culture throughout

their careers.

. Supervised the work of eight subject matter experts using the culture

general approach to develop modules that cover different regions of the

world.

. Provided regular progress briefs to the client.

. Acted as liaison to the social scientists of the USMC's Translational

Research Group.

. Wrote content for the Eastern Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and

Trans-Caucasus modules.

Assistant Professor, Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, TX

8/2008-5/2012

Taught courses in survey and statistical methods (using SPSS, NCSS, online

survey tools, and MS Office), comparative politics (including Africa,

Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and a study abroad course in Estonia and

Russia), international relations, American politics, and political

psychology, as well as interdisciplinary courses team-taught with an

economist.

Supervised student research and writing.

Took a lead role in departmental reorganization and accreditation

assessment.

Served on the International Education Committee and the Institutional

Review Board (for research ethics).

Spoke at Texas A&M on the Russian invasion of Georgia and at TLU on the

independence of Kosovo.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT COURSES

. Intro to Hadoop and MapReduce (Udacity/Cloudera)

7/2014

. Exploratory Data Analysis (Coursera/Johns Hopkins University)

6/2014

o Exploratory visualization, clustering and dimension reduction

. Machine Learning (Coursera/Stanford University)

5/2014

o Neural networks, support vector machines, clustering,

MATLAB/Octave

. Getting and Cleaning Data (Coursera/Johns Hopkins University)

5/2014

. Social Network Analysis (Coursera/University of Michigan)

5/2013

o Centrality, clustering, small world models, contagion, R, Gephi,

NetLogo

. Foundations of Business Strategy (Coursera/University of Virginia)

4/2013

. Introduction to Databases (Stanford Class2Go)

3/2013

o SQL, XML (XPath, XQuery, XSLT), JSON, UML, OLAP, NoSQL

EDUCATION

Ohio State University

6/2005

Ph.D., Political Science, GPA: 3.83

Major in Comparative Politics, Minor in Political Psychology

Patterson School, University of Kentucky

12/1994

M.A., Diplomacy and International Commerce, GPA: 3.90

Major in Political & Economic Development, Minor in East Central Europe

Coursework that included economics, marketing and accounting

Georgia Institute of Technology

6/1992

B.S., Applied Psychology and B.S., International Affairs, GPA: 3.75

(Highest Honors)

PERSONAL

Hobbies: board, war, and computer strategy games; competitive model

rocketry; Android devices

Animal lover

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