I am a freelance journalist, full-time data scientist, and consultant. My stories have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York Times, VICE News, Slate, FiveThirtyEight, The Ringer, and at many other outlets. I focus on data journalism, using statistical analysis to explore topics in criminal justice, science, politics, sports, and elsewhere.
I've written about topics as diverse as predictive policing, Russian election hacking, and Major League Baseball's home run surge. For VICE News, I built the largest media database of police shootings at the time of its publication, which showed that thousands more people are shot than previously estimated--some of them suffering life-altering injuries. At FiveThirtyEight and Baseball Prospectus, I unwound the story of how a tiny change in the seams of MLB's baseballs caused the highest home run rates in baseball history. At The Intercept, I described how police misconduct spreads from officer to officer like an infectious disease.
My work has been featured on HBO's VICE News Tonight, ESPN's SportsCenter, and other television and radio programs. I've been nominated for a Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics award, a Peter Lisagor award for a package of stories with the Invisible Institute, and I was part of a team that was nominated for a 2017 City and Regional Magazine Association award for covering Illinois' budget problems in Chicago magazine.
I also work as a data science consultant, contributing statistical analysis to a variety of firms. My clients have included three MLB teams, multiple law offices, a research-focused nonprofit, and a Fortune 500 company, among others.
I currently work as a Senior Data Scientist for Muck Rack. I worked as a staff writer at FiveThirtyEight from 2015-2018, covering baseball and criminal justice there, and then as a freelance writer/data science consultant. Before that, I earned my PhD in evolutionary genetics from the University of Chicago. I focused on bioinformatics and genomics and built up a lot of experience with data analysis, programming, and machine learning during my time there. I grew up in Virginia and graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia.
You can find me on various social sites or email me at robertkarthur [at] Gmail.
I've written about topics as diverse as predictive policing, Russian election hacking, and Major League Baseball's home run surge. For VICE News, I built the largest media database of police shootings at the time of its publication, which showed that thousands more people are shot than previously estimated--some of them suffering life-altering injuries. At FiveThirtyEight and Baseball Prospectus, I unwound the story of how a tiny change in the seams of MLB's baseballs caused the highest home run rates in baseball history. At The Intercept, I described how police misconduct spreads from officer to officer like an infectious disease.
My work has been featured on HBO's VICE News Tonight, ESPN's SportsCenter, and other television and radio programs. I've been nominated for a Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics award, a Peter Lisagor award for a package of stories with the Invisible Institute, and I was part of a team that was nominated for a 2017 City and Regional Magazine Association award for covering Illinois' budget problems in Chicago magazine.
I also work as a data science consultant, contributing statistical analysis to a variety of firms. My clients have included three MLB teams, multiple law offices, a research-focused nonprofit, and a Fortune 500 company, among others.
I currently work as a Senior Data Scientist for Muck Rack. I worked as a staff writer at FiveThirtyEight from 2015-2018, covering baseball and criminal justice there, and then as a freelance writer/data science consultant. Before that, I earned my PhD in evolutionary genetics from the University of Chicago. I focused on bioinformatics and genomics and built up a lot of experience with data analysis, programming, and machine learning during my time there. I grew up in Virginia and graduated with distinction from the University of Virginia.
You can find me on various social sites or email me at robertkarthur [at] Gmail.