Clare Zimmerman
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What they do:
- Clare designs and builds open data websites for Socrata Customers from local and federal governement, to international organizations and high education institutions. She helps customers put their data online, creat visualizations on top of it, and engage the public in using open data.
Math on the job:
- Clare helps customers understand their data and what types of visualizations to make that best answer the questions they have. She also helps build explorer/application sites that help users understand and navigate through a single or a few datasets, such as state expenditures, election results, or campaign contributions.
Student's background:
- Received a Bachelor of Science in ACMS with an emphasis on Social and Behavioral Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in Spring 2012
- Clare realized that she was good at math in high school, but was only really passionate about it when she was able to combine it with my other interests, particularly government and politics. The ACMS major allowed her to explore math as it applied to other subjects. Combining it with a Political Science degree caused her to approach each subject area with a slightly different perspective: Clare brought logic and analytical skills to poli sci classes, and she took mathematical equations out of the textbook to see how she could apply them to issues our government faces regularly.
Advice for students:
- Take time to figure out what you are passionate about. Clare says she entered as a Freshman intending to do Political Science and Math, but her changed to Psychology, then Environmental Science, and then back to Political Science and Math. She had to take some time to try different things. Unless you are positively sure you want to go to graduate school and know exactly what you want to study, take some time to work and figure it out.