Meet Lena Bartell, #XPNAtoZ data nerd and massive music fan

Meet XPN long time listener Lena Bartell, a massive music fan, and self-described “science and data nerd.” Along with XPN listeners Bruce Segal and Drew Sudell, Lena has been tracking the data from the #XPNAtoZ, and creating data visualizations of it in interesting ways to complement the work of Segal and Sudell.

Bartell grew up in Downingtown and has been a life long listener to XPN. While she still has family here, she lives in Ithaca. “I’m a science and data nerd,” she wrote via e-mail. “After getting my degree in Physics from Penn State, I am now working on my PhD in applied physics and biomedical engineering at Cornell University. After I graduate, I hope to pursue a career in data analysis and visualization.”

While her career is wrapped up in science and data, Lena (of course), is a massive music fan. “Where should I start?” she writes. “Josh Ritter, Hoots and Hellmouth, Decemberists, Punch Brothers, OK Go, Bon Iver, Cake, Courtney Barnett, Jason Isbell, Paul Simon, James Taylor. I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch.”

So far, Lena has been loving the #XPNAtoZ. She says: “I didn’t realize your library was so huge. This has been a lot of fun to listen to and to analyze. I’ve been wanting to try a ‘data’ project in my free time and this was the perfect excuse. Back on December 1st, my friends and I were discussing what the most common artists were, etc. and I though “Well, let’s find out” and it just snowballed from there. Also thanks to the other folks on twitter doing analysis – we’ve formed a mini community that’s very supportive. It’s funny how the A to Z has brought such a diverse set of people together.”

Lena’s full data visualization for the #XPNAtoZ can be found here.
You can follow Lena on twitter @LenaBartell

And our big big thanks to Lena for the work she’s been doing on this.