Amber Thomas

Amber Thomas (https://amber.rbind.io) is a data journalist and “maker” at the online publication of visual essays: The Pudding (https://pudding.cool). Her educational background, however, was in quite a different field altogether: marine biology. She has a bachelor’s degree in marine biology and chemistry from Roger Williams University and a master’s degree in marine sciences from the University of New England. Throughout her academic and professional career as a marine biologist, she realized that she had a love of data analysis, visualization, and storytelling and thus, she switched career paths to something a bit more data focused.

While looking for work, she began conducting personal projects to expand her knowledge of R’s inner workings. She decided to put all of her projects in a single place online (so that she could be discovered, naturally) and after lots of searching, she stumbled upon an early release of the blogdown package. She was hooked right away and spent a few days setting up her personal website and writing a tutorial on how she did it. You can find that tutorial and some of her other projects and musings on her blogdown site.

When she is not crunching numbers and trying to stay on top of her email inbox, Amber is usually getting some fresh Seattle air or cuddling with her dog, Sherlock. If you are looking for her in the digital world, try https://twitter.com/ProQuesAsker.