My name is Seth Dobson, and this is my personal website, where I blog mostly about the statistical programming language R, but also about marketing and data science in general. All views expressed here are my own.

I am currently a Data Scientist at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a subsidiary of Colgate-Palmolive. At Hill’s, I am helping to build a data-driven approach to marketing using advanced analytics.

My career path to marketing analytics has been unconventional to say the least.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Anthropology-Zoology in 1999, and later earned a PhD in Biological Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006. My dissertation research was on monkey facial expressions.

Fig. 1 Video recording Gelada Baboons in Ethiopia

In 2007, I landed a tenure track position at Dartmouth College, where I taught undergraduate courses and continued my research on primate behavior (Fig. 1). You can see a list of my publications on Google Scholar.

After leaving academia in 2014, I began searching for jobs as a data analyst. My first job outside of academia was at Discover Financial Services. I worked there for 4 years and learned a lot about business intelligence and predictive analytics. Along the way, I taught myself R by blogging about Scottish football analytics as a hobby.

I joined Merkle, a performance marketing agency owned by the Dentsu Aegis Network, in November, 2018. From there, my career in marketing analytics really took off 🚀

My job involves using R everyday, which I love. I work remotely from my home in Peoria, AZ, much to the delight of my cats (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Kiefer the R cat, RIP

For more R content, please visit R-bloggers and RWeekly.org.