Sometimes pop culture and data analysis meet and the result is something interesting, thought-provoking, and of course controversial. How can one use data to prove definitely which Taylor Swift songs are the most underrated? Isn't this a question for your heart to answer? Andrew Firriolo sought to answer this question over the last few months and the results are interesting (if you're a Taylor Swift fan). As a Swiftie since 2006 (moniker for Taylor Swift fans), Andrew wanted to find a way to bridge his passions for Taylor Swift and data analysis. He's currently a senior data analyst at Buzzfeed, and published his findings on Buzzfeed to much reaction from the Swiftie community. In the words of Taylor Swift, Andrew's methodology and analysis just "hits different." From comp sci to data analytics Andrew studied computer science at New Jersey Institute of Technology but realized he liked the math parts of his degree over the engineering parts. Like many guests on this podcast, he made a transition to data analytics. Interestingly, it wasn't a job that propelled him into the world of data analytics. But rather, going to graduate school at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). GIT has some really affordable online technical programs including data analytics. After getting his master's degree, he worked at Rolling Stone as a data analyst. This is the beginning of Andrew's exploration into the Spotify API to see the data behind music. You can see some of the articles Andrew published while at Rolling Stone here. Source: Pocketmags After Rolling Stone, Andrew landed his current role at Buzzfeed building internal dashboards and doing internal analysis. In both of his roles, he talks about using a lot of SQL and R. A big part of his job is explaining the analyses he's doing to his colleagues. This is where the data storytelling aspect of a data analyst's job comes into play. I call this the "soft" side of analytics but some would argue that it's the most important part of a data analyst's job. In most data analyst roles you aren't just sitting at your desk writing SQL queries and building Excel models. You're a business partner with other people in the organization communication skills are more important than technical skills. Answering a Taylor Swift question with data Andrew became a Taylor Swift fan through his sister in 2006. They both listed to the world premier of Taylor's first album. Given his background in data, Andrew decided to answer a question about Taylor Swift that's been on his mind for a while: what are Taylor Swift's most underrated songs? To read Andrew's full article, go to this Buzzfeed post. Andrew's hypothesis was that there's a way to use data to prove which songs in Taylor's discography are most underrated. When I classify something as "underrated," it's usually a decision you make with your gut. But it's always interesting to see the data (and the methodology) for determining if something is truly "underrated." Multiple iterations in song streaming analysis ...