What I'm up to

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What I'm learning

Programming Collective Intelligence
An excellent overview of basic text- and data-mining techniques such as decision trees, neural networks and genetic algorithms. Not very deep, but extremely broad.
Programming Collective Intelligence

About your host

More than you ever wanted to know about Chase Davis.

I am a journalist and Web developer based in Des Moines, Iowa. By day, I work as a reporter for The Des Moines Register, where I specialize in using databases, computer programming and statistics to do investigative journalism. By night, I develop dynamic news applications, lately using Python and Django.

Professional

Before I joined the Register in November 2008, I worked for more than two years on the investigative team at the Houston Chronicle, where I wrote stories on subjects ranging from questionable dealings in county government to waste and misspending at NASA. Prior to that, I worked for nearly two years as a data analyst for the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting. I also did freelance CAR work for a number of organizations, from The Boston Globe to the Virginia Public Access Project. In 2009, I co-founded the Web development firm Hot Type Consulting with Matt Waite of the St. Petersburg Times.

Personal

I grew up in St. Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, and have lived and worked in more than a half-dozen cities since. I graduated from University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

When I'm not working, you can usually find me playing guitar, reading non-fiction, following baseball, or finding excuses to get out of the house.