I was eager to complete the Economics + Social Mobility Analysis VTP—an opportunity I was provided via the Dallas Fed—because I’m starting my Master’s in Economics and want exposure to computational and analytical techniques in the field. I also hope to apply programming skills I learned from this project in R to my work at the Fed, where I am continuing to work while pursuing my studies.

It was a short but sweet project that taught me more about cleaning data in R and drawing statistical inferences from them. It was a fun week and a very interactive project overall. I particularly enjoyed interacting with staff from Opportunity Insights to learn more about how they use the Opportunity Atlas data to discuss attributes of a locale with its elected officials. Not only did this course teach me about data science, but it also taught me more about economic mobility across different areas of the country.