Chicago, Ill. robertezrastern@gmail.com @RobertEzraStern r-e-stern

Hey internet — I'm

I'm a data thinker, coder, and bridge player based in Chicago.

Hey internet — I'm R.E. Stern.

People also call me Robert Ezra, Robert E., or ‘hey you.’

I live in Chicago, where previously I studied computer science at the University of Chicago. I enjoy bridge, games, baseball, coding, writing, and assorted shenanigans.

Work

Prosodica

I am currently developing new features for Prosodica, working to provide a platform for businesses to analyze and improve their telephonic and dialogue-based interactions.

Chicago Booth Stigler Center

I worked with ProMarket.org, a publication of Chicago Booth's Stigler Center, to redesign their the web, WordPress, and SEO presence with a new layouts and additional site features.

UChicago Data Science Institute

I returned to the DSI Summer Lab program in 2023 as a Lab Coordinator, providing generalist research assistance to a large cohort of budding undergraduate + high school researchers working on projects under the DSI umbrella.

Oakland Athletics

For the 2022 season, I was a baseball operations intern with the Oakland Athletics, my favorite baseball team since childhood. I helped out with a variety of projects, including researching and evaluating data on amateur players for the 2022 MLB draft and on professionals for the trade deadline.

Mansueto Insitute for Urban Innovation

In summer 2021, I built a hyper-localized, interactive map of human development index in the United States with data from the U.S. Census. I've also worked to develop a browser-based mapping tool to procedurally generate road networks for under-accessible world cities.

Center for Spatial Data Science

In summer 2020, I worked with a team from UChicago's Center for Spatial Data Science to create a methodology and sample case studies that would prepare users to follow best academic practices while using GeoDa, the Center's exploratory data analysis program.

Projects

It’s Your God-Given Right to Overreact to the FiveThirtyEight Election Forecast

For the Chicago Shady Dealer's 2020 election coverage, I designed and launched a satirical data journalism site. This interactive comedic feature I built for the site takes our collective obsession with up-to-the-minute election coverage to its logical extreme, and only shows its user recent changes in the FiveThirtyEight forecast, rather than topline numbers.

Baseball Outcomes

After the 2020 MLB season launched with a mind-numbingly confusing playoff qualification format, I built this tool to dynamically simulate and visualize potential playoff and draft outcomes of the 2020 MLB season for every team, including likely playoff opponents. During baseball season, it updates probabilities automatically after each game.

HitchHike Delivery

At Uncommon Hacks 2020, I worked with a team to develop a prototype app, and an accompanying smart delivery container, designed to accommodate distributed, crowd-sourced physical delivery. The app allows deliverers to deliver packages partway to their destinations in order to solve that last-mile problem. Our app won Best Internet of Things Hack.

Many of my other projects are available on my GitHub page.

Media

I was on a podcast once. If you're just here for that, this is the section for you. If you had no clue, enjoy!

Reply All: #163 Candidate One

Gimlet Media's popular Reply All podcast ran an episode featuring my work to detect and remedy voter fraud as Commissioner of Elecions during the 2019 Berkeley High School elections. According to a random Facebook user, the episode "honestly was the lowest point of Reply All imo."

Berkeleyside: Berkeley High student tried to rig his own election, exposing flaw in district’s cybersecurity

The podcast episode was based on this Berkeleyside article from April 2019, which goes into more detail about my work and the aftermath of the incident, especially pertaining to my methodology, which the podcast largely ignores.

Report on Fraudulent Voting in the 2019-20 BHS ASB Election

In turn, the Berkeleyside article was based on a report I circulated to the student body shortly after the incident, which, if I'm being honest, tells the story far more completely than either media report. I've hosted a copy here. If you're afraid of graphs, don't read it.