A little bit about myself.

And why I use ‘@chrischunli’ everywhere!

If you have reached this blog from any other of my online presences, you probably know my name already. For the uninitiated (not to sound pompous), my name is Christian Lee and I’m a graduating senior at San Francisco State University. As of this post, it is May 2nd, about three weeks before my graduation ceremony. Right now, things are extremely hectic, yet exciting at the same time, mainly because I don’t know what life is like without school. Going through school semester by semester — you start to structure your life around learning, and that includes your brain too. As a kid, I would shut down my brain during the summer and just drown myself in video games, but now I figure I should drown myself in data science. Video games used to be (and still are, to an extent) a huge part of my life, but now that I found a professional passion, I finally have a cure to my summer “brain shut down.”

During my undergrad career at San Francisco State University, I studied Decision Sciences, which is a more generalized version of data science. Basically, decision scientists use math to support executive decisions. We use statistics and calculus to make business better; my studies focused on data analysis, computer simulation, and optimization. Typical problems we tackled in class include how to optimize a supply chain, or how to simulate a typical single-server car wash model.

When I reached my senior year at SFSU, I found that the decision sciences major lacked the software background to realistically tackle real world problems. My professors usually gave us Excel files with data, which means that our problems contained very clean, small sets of data. The theory I learned as a decision science major was fine, but I needed a way to supplement the major for huge amounts of data. That’s when I decided to take on a minor in Information Systems, where I took classes that taught about business intelligence tools. I learned programs like SAS, Business Explorer, Tableau; along with other IT related software like Microsoft Project. It definitely rounded out my decision sciences major, and I suggest that anyone in a similar field take the same route.

As for how I discovered data science, and why I think that it’s the best career for me — I’ll save that for another post. And for those who are wondering about the subtitle of this post, I do have an explanation for my @chrischunli name! My actual name is Christian Lee, and I really like fighting games (think Chun-Li from Street Fighter). Now, if you pronounce ‘chrischunli’ altogether, do you hear any similarities to my real name? ☺

Have a good one guys,

Christian