My name is Ed Alvarez from New Jersey, USA. I have spent the past 30+ years as a solutions developer, implementing a wide variety of solutions primarily involving databases and spreadsheet management/automation. I have an MS in Information Management from Stevens Institute of Technology. A good part of my career has involved working with the Microsoft program suite - i.e., Access, Excel, and I have experience with using the SQL language. Throughout my time, I have utilized the VBA language to implement many applications which take data from a source and transform it into information and visualizations that afford management a variety of KPIs on business areas of interest. While my career has also involved service in a number of other business areas/domains, solutions development and data analysis have served as my main passion. Over recent times and with an eye toward the future, I have spent significant time becoming as proficient in the Python language as possible, and now more recently I have decided that the current world of data science appeals to me very much. Whether I will wind up good enough at it = time will tell. Nonetheless, my goal is to become as proficient as I can in data science. I look forward to this latest journey. I wish all of you well in your respective journeys, and I encourage you to: Be persistent, use errors as a learning experience, never give up no matter how hard things may get sometimes when learning new technologies and concepts, and follow your passion all the way to the goal line!