William Polley

Trained as an economist, I have always had a strong affinity for applications of mathematics and computer programming. I have worked with a variety of mathematical and statistical software and programming languages including Mathematica and Matlab. More recently, I have moved to Python and learned the language in part by translating some of my old programs. My current interests are largely in business applications of economics and data analytics. While at Western Illinois University, I have worked on projects involving analysis of admissions data. Predictive analytics are one of my passions. This fits well with training in economics. Along the way, I have taken on various faculty leadership roles and administrative roles including Vice President for Administrative Services. I returned to faculty during a reorganization at the university and am currently teaching decision science courses in addition to economics. This new teaching assignment in decision science has motivated me to dive even further into the world of data science.