Let me tell you something about a combination that you wouldn’t notice that often. First there is me - A political scientist. Then there is this bunch of books, classes and tests about statistics, probability and coding that I took and never touched again as soon as I was done with it. How does all of this combine?

No progress at the university

Well, it has been a while since I left the university and even more time has passed since I took those classes. But deep down in my mind I never forgot about it, but actually never used it. This changed. While I studied at the university every professor always repeatedly stressed the importance of statistic and programming skills. Which I didn’t took that seriously back then, to be honest.

During my studies I got to know a lot about political systems, institutions, political theories and economic implications. But the statistical part remained slow, dry and almost incomprehensible. For me this was only a bunch of stuff that I had to know in order to pass my exams.

A new perspective

What changed? As soon as I left the academic spheres things started to get furiously more concrete. Suddenly the real world was an issue! Actions had direct impact on the environment around me. Sounds silly, but it’s the truth. And zoooom… 9 years went by and I finally remembered my statistics and programming foundations.

While acquiring all the knowledge that came into life while I was mentally absent, I realize what I had done. Or maybe better: What I hadn’t done.

My working path had prepared me for all of this but I kept ignoring it over several years! How could I?

It was mesmerizing: Suddenly I opened the toolbox again that had all these funny methods and ways of analyzing the world and -most interesting- the future. Linear and logistic regression, hypotheses testing, shaping and bending reality through statistical means, to only name a few of them. You can call it Pandora’s box.

This blog has three different goals:

1. Providing in-depth insights to everyone who is curious about the connection between political issues, their analysis and forecasting

2. Providing my personal experience of self studying statistics, Python and R, so everyone can follow along

3. Providing insights on diving into non-political forecasting, machine learning and app development

Tl;dr: I came back from theoretical politics to analyzing the world with the help of the tools that were given to me: Statistics, Python and R. It is my goal to give a little more in-depth insights to the political world from a point of view that approached programming from an unusual perspective.

This is my personal journey, but it is also yours! I want to write down what I experience while going down the rabbit hole. I am a professional when it comes to politics and communication, but I am kind of a newbie regarding programming and coding. Maybe that’s some reversed Dunning-Kruger effect at this point. Let’s go!