Just a cute pic of me
by Mike McKee
Personal

Before Dorky Data I was a Physics Dork

A little lesson from a high school physics dork

Back in high school, I loved physics.

And I loved it so much that I skipped varsity baseball practice a few times to study particle physics. Crazy, right? Little did I know, my junior year physics class was the beginning of this data dork I've become today.

But things changed quickly...

My love for physics fizzled away once that school year ended. It was like a summer vacation fling.

There's good news, though...

In the movies, the main character always reunites with their summer fling. They get back together in some crazy fashion -- with an epic dance number if they're lucky. So why not make my life a movie? I reignited my former love for physics, and I'm starting one book at a time.

The first one is Stephon Alexander's "The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe"

And chapter two has already smacked me with some heavy lessons from Alexander's college days.

"By creating an analogy between a known idea in one field and an unresolved problem in another, discoveries can be made and new avenues of exploration opened up."

Talk about wisdom.
Inspiring, no?

Analogies are powerful.

I used to use them when I ran a newsletter called Marketing Film Studies -- it was all about using movie analogies to explain marketing. And this is something I'm reviving too...

Analogies have always made learning easier for me. I used them all the while learning data analytics tools like SQL, Excel, and Python. Now it's time for me to bring them back from the past and make some cool analogies to help you understand more about my Dorky World of Data.

Are you ready?