For my third project at Metis I looked at classifying types of political committees by ad contracts. Generally speaking, a political committee is an organization that spends money to influence a political race or promote a political agenda. Money in politics, refered to as campaign finance and/or spending, is a hot topic these days thanks in large part to the Supreme Court case Citizens United and more recently Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. For those unfamiliar with the issue, the discussion around it centers on the implications of large amounts of money–often from a relatively few entities–being spent to sway voter opinion.

For my second project at Metis I set out to predict winning stage times for the Tour de France. For those unfamiliar with the Tour it is the premier cycling competition in the world, although some may disagree. It’s one of the four cycling grand tours and the most well-known cycling race in the United States. The Tour takes place each July and consists of 21 individual races called stages. Each stage has an individual winner and the overall winner is the rider with the lowest cumulative time after all the stages.

For our first project at Metis we analyzed MTA turnstile data. Our task was to recommend stations for a fictitious non-profit to place canvassers to collect email addresses for an upcoming event. My group decided to recommend stations that were among the busiest in the city and in proximity to the largest tech companies and a handful of upcoming events.