A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.

Data Work Involves a lot of Math

I remember reading a blog post by a digital archivist at the Library of Congress a few years ago. He made a list of software and skills he used in his daily work and suggested what digital archivists should know for the profession.

What stuck out to me was the skills related to math and computer science. At the time I was a digital asset manager and my employer had no capacity for meeting the professional benchmarks of DAM or even digital preservation. The most used tool I had was Google Sheets!

I remember brushing this blog post off and thinking that only at the Library of Congress could these skills be used.

This past week these thoughts came up again.

I’m participating in a prize game jam competition and I built new menu systems from scratch in a video game (see below).

Video games are applications with tons of math! To make the game menu, for example, I do geometry calculations to match a small image of the words “Settings” circled in red to it overlays on the correct location on the pixels of the actual background sticky note image.

I took a moment to reflect on how I used math in my work. I realized we use a lot math regardless of whether we actively think about it. It reminds me that our current job doesn’t dictate what skills we can/want to know. To that digital archivist’s point from years ago: data work inherently involves math when you work with digital content or computers. Machines might do calculations for you, convert file formats for you, or - if you change text on a website - there are calculations happening between the pixels.

I challenge you to think about math. Does it make you uncomfortable? Do you see math in your data work? Why or why not?

Educational Opportunities

A short list of things to explore!

[YouTube Class] Follow a walkthrough and make a card game app

Making an app sounds scary, but you probably have experience making one! Apps include menus, settings, and content. Ever made a table of contents? You made a menu! I hated programming classes that didn’t show you how to practically use your skills. Take this walkthrough to build a portfolio project and see what it takes to make an app.

[YouTube Tutorial] Build a Flask Dashboard

A Flask app is made in Python and shows up on your computer’s web browser. You can publish it online in like GitHub. Dashboards are great for visualizing data!

[Thinking Fuel] Read up on Digital Preservation Tools

It’s difficult to get information about digital preservation that’s not a vendor selling a product. The Digital Preservation Coalition has a lot of white papers with cool topics like digital preservation and AI, carbon footprints and preservation, and benchmarks.

Let’s Create!

I’m open to collaborations, freelance gigs, and conversations about the ideas I shared. Feel free to get in touch and comment on the newsletter.