About me

The Practical Data Science blog is written by Matt Clarke, an Ecommerce and Marketing Director and specialist in ecommerce, and marketing science.

About me
2 minutes to read

For over a decade I’ve worked as an Ecommerce Director and Chief Digital Officer at a range of B2C and B2B ecommerce businesses, where I’ve led ecommerce, marketing, development, and BI teams. Data science has always been a major part of my work and has helped my teams produce far better results.

Like most other people working in the field, I kind of stumbled into it. I originally trained as a biologist, and did Master’s degrees in taxonomy and bioinformatics, where I developed a love for software engineering and data analysis.

After a decade working in publishing (writing, editing, and developing websites and magazines) I decided to move to the field of ecommerce and marketing and then did a third Master’s degree in Internet Retailing to brush up on the specifics.

When I’m not working (or fly fishing), I’ll be found learning new data science techniques or reading about new things to try. Practical Data Science serves as my notepad for the side projects I do at home, and helps me remember how to do things when I forget in the future. I hope you find it useful.

Career history

  • 2021-Present - Ecommerce and Marketing Director
  • 2015-2021 - Chief Digital Officer
  • 2013-2015 - Ecommerce Director
  • 2010-2013 - Ecommerce Director
  • 2001-2010 - Technical Writer > Senior Developer > Editor-in-Chief
  • 1992-2001 - Freelance Technical Writer

Qualifications

  • MSc in Internet Retailing, Manchester Metropolitan University
  • MSc in Bioinformatics, Leeds University
  • MRes and DIC in Advanced Methods in Taxonomy, Imperial College, London
  • BSc (Hons) in Freshwater and Marine Biology, University of Wales

Personal GitHub projects

In my spare time I create open source tools for data scientists working in ecommerce and marketing, primarily so I can use them myself and save time at work.

  • EcommerceTools - a data science toolkit for ecommerce and marketing
  • GAPandas - access the Google Analytics 3 Reporting API data using Pandas
  • GAPandas4 - access the Google Analytics 4 API using Pandas
  • PyGAMP - send data to the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol API
  • ShopifyScraper - scrape data and prices from Shopify stores
  • Gilfoyle - create stylish PDF reports from Pandas

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