Brandon Rhodes

Hello, I’m a sixth-year PhD student in the Department of Linguistics and a second-year Master’s student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. The majority of my earlier work is more in linguistics proper while the later work has more variety in the topics / data-to-be-analyzed; however, all my work has an emphasis on quantitative analysis and/or incorporation of statistical methods. I really enjoy carefully looking at data, trying to figure out what can be learned from it and then finding ways to use that knowledge.

As most statisticians do now-a-days, I also have experience using various machine learning tools, such as the ever-explosive / ever-exciting family of deep neural network models. When it comes to machine learning, most of my experience is in NLP and speech. I’ve gravitated towards these fields because my training in linguistics makes working on these problems conceptually interesting as well as a bit more intuitive when it comes to understanding what a model is (not) doing. Though NLP and speech were the natural places for me to start, please don’t get the impression that that is what I am only interested in, as that can’t be further from the truth! In fact, although I have not done much work in this area, I am pretty interested in sports data, so stay tuned for a project of that nature!

I hope that gives a decent overview of my experience, skillset and interests, but please feel free to contact me at bprhodes@uchicago.edu with any questions.

Just a brief note on the website. This is my personal website, so I intend for this site to be less formal than my resume and CV in terms of the presentation, but more informative in terms of the explanation of work you find (and also don’t find!) in those documents. I’ve tried to organize it in a reasonable way, but please feel free to email me at bprhodes@uchicago.edu with any questions about the projects or suggestions on how I can make them better or organize their presentation so that it is easier for someone who is not me to consume what is there.