Want to know more about Nan? Keep on reading :)

Want to know more about Nan? Keep on reading :)

Hi there, I'm Nan, a Ph.D. candidate in Cognitive Linguistics at UC School of Education. Yes, that's right, I am a linguist, who people rarely associate data analytics with!

Academic Background

For my academic work, I inquiry about the dynamics among culture, language, and cognition. My dissertation investigates how culture-specific conceptual metaphor may have influenced the way we learn and use another language. My research experience involves various research methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods methodologies.

What Brought Me Here

Although my academic background seems to have very little to do with data analytics, my graduate assistant work at UC Evaluation Services Center has brought me into the amazing world of data analytics, and that's the reason why I am here! At UCESC, we assist grant-funded educational projects across the country with their project evaluation. For example, we help the Primary Investigators to evaluate the fidelity of their project design and implementation, we construct and carry out data collection plans, we analyze the data we collected to answer evaluation questions, and we draft reports and deliverables to disseminate our evaluation results. My work at UCESC includes a variety of data-related responsibilities such as data collection (i.e., survey, behavioral task, interview, focus group), data management, data cleaning and analysis, and report drafting. During my work at UCESC, I have started to see how powerful data could be, how data drives our decision making, and how data has influenced our ways of living. In order to learn more about how to take the advantages that data has enabled us, I enrolled in the DANA graduate certificate program.

Experience with R

I used R for several courses that I have taken. For example, I used R for STATS I & II offered by my department, I used R for the Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Design course, and I also used R for a couple of courses that I've taken for DANA. However, it is the first time for me to use R for data cleaning purposes that we emphasize in this class.

Experience with Other Analytic Software

For my work at UCESC, I use SPSS primarily. I am experience with SPSS syntax, and I use it on a daily basis to clean and analyze data. I also know basic SAS.