Adam Olson
Data scientist. Political scientist in a previous life.
I'm a senior data scientist at Essentia Health. I got here by way of NMDP and Colle McVoy, after spending most of my twenties at the University of Minnesota studying Congress and teaching political science. This site is mostly where I keep things I've written, made, or wanted to remember. Read more on the about page.
Writing
- Animating DW-NOMINATE Scores with gganimateUsing gganimate to show how the ideological distribution of Congress has shifted since World War II.
- Interfacing with SQL in R Using the odbc PackageHow I structure reusable, parameterized R functions for pulling data out of SQL Server with the odbc package.
- Benford's Law and Election FraudA plain-language walkthrough of Benford's Law, and a quick check of whether the 2012 Minnesota U.S. Senate results fit the pattern.
Older writing
Between 2014 and 2019 I wrote a lot about Congress, politics, and academic life. Some of it holds up better than others. It's all still here in the archive.