Last weekend I had a sit-down conversation with Nicholas Kallfa. Nicholas is a data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton where he works on creating tailored products for government clients using R and mathematical computing techniques to visualize information in R’s open-source platform Shiny. Not only is Nicholas a great communicator of advanced mathematics, but he shared with us the various methods he uses to guide clients through difficult concepts to reach a mutual understanding. This interview was quite enjoyable since there were an abundance of cats knocking things over in the background. If there is residual noise, I blame it on them.

Toolkit: R (R Studio), Python (Spyder), Git/GitHub, Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server, QGIS, Latex, Tableau, Excel

Nick’s favorite online resources:

• Udemy (mostly to learn something completely new for the first time)
• Stack Overflow
• Relevant subreddits
• Mostly just google and see where he ends up

Influential books about data:

• Intro to Statistical Learning
• The Signal and the Noise
• Data Science for Business
• Analyzing Baseball with R

Bio: Nicholas Kallfa is a Data Scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton where he specializes in providing research and data science support to clients within the federal government. Some of his previous clients include U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as multiple clients in the Department of Defense. He has a background in mathematics holding a MS from the University of Iowa and currently lives in Alexandria, VA with his fiancee and 4 mischievous cats.