Introducing…. Sherman Lo

We’ve asked each member of the Living with Machines team to introduce themselves in their initial blog post.

What’s your name?

Sherman Lo

What’s your background?

Computational Statistics and Machine Learning.

In one sentence, what is your role on the project?

I am a Research Software Engineer, working on linking individuals in historical census data.

What excites you about the project?

I’m interested to experience data other than numbers, for example, text in newspapers and census. I’m also looking forward to working with colleagues from various backgrounds.  

What challenges do you see ahead?

My workflow or habits will have to change because we will be working with data which is not publicly available and owned by a company. This means we have to work within the confinement of security measures set out for us.

The data set is not only huge but has some uncertainty or error, for example, some of the characters in the primary source are too damaged to read. Any conclusions or results should be given in the face of such uncertainty.

What’s the last (non-work) book you read, exhibition or performance you saw?

Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors – Matt Parker

A funny book describing and explaining maths errors made in society and by professionals. My favourite one is in Microsoft Excel, if you input 489 into DEC2HEX, it would output 1E9; hilariously, Excel would treat 1E9 as scientific notation! The book also sadly touches on fatal accidents due to mathematical errors made in engineering.

Where can we find out more about you and your work?

Twitter: twitter.com/shermanlo77

GitHub: github.com/shermanlo77

Website: shermanlo77.github.io