About me & my projects

Hi! Glad you popped up here.

The short history

As the little thing on the side <— says, I love way too many things, and I try to understand them. This blog is an attempt to make some order, and share. In my writing and all my projects, I favour quality over quantity, and I am very open to any feedback you may feel like sharing.

The longer version

My name is Martina Pugliese, I am a physicist by studies and work in/with data science (since the glorious times it was uncool, the pre-2010s era). I love science, you can read some of my thinking and journey in this old post. I also love quantified information and this blog has got some things about data and data science, both technical and meta-thinking. I do hand-drawn data vizs as well (see in my projects, I really enjoy the display of information in a visual way.

I’m Italian and also a great fan of linguistics and languages, some of my research when in academia was indeed about the evolution of natural languages - I’ve done a PhD in Physics with a focus on quantitative Linguistics, which may seem an inconsistent coupling but it’s actually a very fruitful one: coming from the Physics of complex systems you can apply methodologies and frameworks to other disciplines and help investigate open questions quantitatively. Beside Linguistics, I love languages in general and taught myself some. I make large use of a thesaurus when writing. This blog has a few posts about languages & related topics. If you want to know more about my research you can have a look at my scientific publications.

I obviously code in my job but also for personal projects & for fun - I like it and am a great fan of open source (thanks everyone!). There’s some posts here which work a bit like tutorials: it may be that something such as how to install a library or how to use a tool - it’s my way of giving back to the community of developers and creators who make the software I use public and free. Or it may just be that I fancy illustrating some concept or topic. These days, I mostly code in Python, but I have to say I kinda miss the days of physics simulations in C++ (or Fortran at times).

I run, together with some wonderful co-orgs, the PyData Edinburgh meetup community, which has been a dazzling journey so far - lots learned, lots of fun, many good chats. PyData Edinburgh is a great way to do some public speaking if you have something interesting to share, we really encourage speakers of any experience and we help out if you’re not sure how to start with public speaking.

Sections

Tidbit is a word I love: something small, delicious, and fun.

Here on the blog, the “Data Tidbits” category lists the post where I’ve done something quantitative with data, exploring a subject. I also have a category for tech writing (the “Tech Tidbits”), which encompasses little tutorials or explanations/discoveries in programming and general tech.

Apart from data, coding and language things, there’s also posts here over various random topics - places I’ve been to, things I’ve investigated and learned, leadership ideas, opinions, anything else coming to mind.

All images/photos shown on this blog are mine unless otherwise specified, and credited. In some cases, I’ve used free-to-reuse imagery. My little avatar here on the side was made by my illustrator friend ladyofshalott89.

I’m really happy if I manage to take a good photo by the way.

Projects

These are things I’m curating at the moment, or perennial works-in-progress, or maybe things I did and don’t add to anymore.

Tales of Science & Data

Tales of Science & Data is a collection of notes (as a GitBook) on topics of data science I wrote, and occasionally keep editing and adding to. This project started when I had a bunch of notebooks with hand-written notes (I love hand-writing other than hand-drawing by the way!) and I decided it was about time I’d give them a digital form: both for myself, to avoid the ugly job of having to add notes over notes on paper, for any supplement, and in order to share with others.

There are still lots of sections that would deserve an expansion, or major improvements - I have a list of tasks. But these days I’m erratically adding to this when an occasion pops up.

DoodleDatCard

Doodling Data Cards (aka DoodleDatCard) (Twitter, Instagram) - my hand-drawn data stories, on cards. Some of these cards are accompanied by a post, in the “Data” category here here on this blog. I’m quite erratic in the topics I explore, either I have a question to answer, go look for data and display it, or I see/hear some data somewhere and I decide to give it a visual form.

Speaking

I regularly speak about data topics, from reflections on the field to technical ones. You can see a list of talks I’ve given on Github.

I’m always happy to help people in regards to speaking in public, as it is something I enjoy doing a lot, pop me a message and I’d be happy to share some tips in case.