Amal Bhatnagar
Where are you at right now?
In the panhandle of Florida, near the Alabama border, like Panama City beach. It's beautiful here, but I'm just vacationing, I'm from Atlanta, Georgia.
What's your major and what year are you?
I'm a senior double majoring in economics and data science. I wish I took more CS classes, in hindsight, it's so useful. Data science is still developing, but CS is just an established program.
What are some fun facts about you?
I've watched The Office 7 times from beginning to end, and I don't want to do the math on how many hours that is because it'll just make me feel bad.
Did you play any sports in high school or college?
Yeah, in high school I did track and cricket, which is like the Indian version of baseball. In college, just a little bit of kayaking and rock climbing, nothing too rigorous. Just on my own time, not through any orgs.
What TV shows (besides The Office) are you interested in? Is The Office your favorite show of all time?
Honestly, if you asked me last year, I would have said The Office was my favorite show of all time, and I like it, but I don't like it as much as before. I think I just watched it too many times, it's too predictable! I don't think I have a favorite show now, last year I went through a phase where I just binged Netflix when I was free, so probably 9 out of 10 of the shows that you see on Netflix I've seen. After watching so many, I kind of forget the plot of all of them, but I like political shows and crime or comedy.
What about movies, similar genres or different?
For movies, I have to go with just comedy. I watched Ted and Ted 2 a few times, those are pretty good. Sometimes I do older movies too like Forrest Gump, that kind of stuff.
What's your professional experience been like at Cal?
I worked at a venture capital firm one summer doing analysis on the companies the firm was already invested in, that was really cool, and one summer I did a business internship, and this past summer I was doing Data Science for financing. Basically like when a company is trying to buy another company, trying to figure out ways to improve the revenue. Even though it was this past semester and it was cut short and virtual, it was still cool to see how to do.
Did you always want to go into the Financial sector or did you explore that more in college?
I've always wanted to do something business, coming into college I was actually pre-Haas, which explains the Econ part. My sophomore year, after taking Data 8, I wanted to do something more technical, like data related, so that's when I picked up Data Science.
What other things and clubs are you involved with on campus?
I'm pretty active in the Division of Data Science, there I do two things. One, I teach a class called Economic Models, so there we're teaching Econ using Data Science techniques, and we started it I think 3 semesters ago, and now we've taught more than 100 students, and it's been very cool and we've gotten a lot of good feedback. It seems to be solving a pain point, since traditionally econ is taught where you draw a graph with pen and paper, and you don't really work with data unless you go to grad school, so we're just trying to make it more data driven. So working with data sets and working with Python at an undergrad level. That's been really cool. The second thing I do is I work with a team that helps other institutions start data science programs, so we've helped more than 65 different institutions around the world. In Asia, in the Middle East, in Europe, even in community colleges here in the US and other 4 year institutions, and that's been a very cool experience.
How did you find out about SAAS originally?
It's gotta be the tabling on Sproul, it actually worked! I just was walking on Sproul and someone pitched it to me, and it seemed cool, since it was the beginning of my junior year and before that, I was just teaching myself a lot of data science concepts, so Data Consulting seemed really cool. So that semester, I applied to DC, and luckily I got in, and it's been a really cool experience since.
What committees have you been a part of since then?
Just DC.
What have your big takeaways from DC been?
Data science in the real world is so different from what's being taught in schools.
In what ways do you mean?
I think it's the access to data, a lot of times in Data 100 or CS 189 we're given this really good dataset, but in the real world, either the client doesn't have a really good dataset so you have to use public data, or they do have data, but it's a thousand different columns instead of the nice 5 columns like what's given in class, so we really have to use different tests to figure out which columns are the best, and if we don't have access to the data, we have to go collect it ourselves. Last semester, I was the head of the Indeed project, and so we weren't given any data, and had to go scrape data from Indeed or use different economic indicators. It really tests how you are able to get data and how you're able to use that data.
What is your proudest accomplishment through SAAS?
I think it's gotta be the Indeed project last semester, since because of Corona we started in person and had a lot of really cool plans, but halfway through the semester we had to switch. Everyone was in Pacific time, but I eventually came back home to Eastern time, so it was trying to navigate through the time differences and everyone was trying to deal with classes, so people had to spend less time on SAAS. With limited time, we still came up with a really good deliverable that the client really liked, and they're actually considering one of the features we proposed for the model, which was very cool to hear.
Do you have a favorite SAAS memory from your time?
Well I have a regret - I wish I went to the retreats when we could do them in person. The memory would be my first semester in SAAS, I was on Luke's team, and we were working with this startup, and just preparing for the final deliverable, we got to see our hard work pay off from beginning to end. Just being able to see all the cool things that the rest of the team was able to work on and how good our part of the project was.
Do you think being in SAAS impacted your direction? Or because you were already interested in Data Science, SAAS was appealing to you?
I think it gave a lot of confidence in the direction I was taking. Before SAAS, I was learning a lot of stuff on my own, and Data 100 is a good course, all of the Berkeley courses are good, but SAAS really gave me that real world experience I needed in order to have more confidence in this path. Without SAAS, I probably would have stuck with the Data Science major, but I would have been more lost.
What's the prettiest building and best bathroom to use on campus?
The answer to both of those is Haas. Haas fourth floor is the best bathroom, and Haas is just so clean, there's no trash anywhere like Dwinelle.
Do you have a favorite restaurant or boba shop on campus?
Racha's, I love Racha's. It's on Telegraph near Sliver if you keep walking, next to Moe's bookstore. You should definitely go, it's really affordable, less than $10 for a good meal, and I like Thai food, so it fits perfectly.
Do you have a favorite library on campus?
Good question… Actually, I have to go with Haas again. I think with Haas, a lot of the time the library is pretty empty for most of the year, so you can get a really nice spot and even when it's later at night, security doesn't kick you out, so you can stay way past and keep studying.
What's your favorite Berkeley memory?
There are so many. Being remote really makes you nostalgic and makes everything better than it probably was in the moment. Probably sophomore year a few friends and I were hanging out late at night over by the Music buildings on the way to Evans, and we were just climbing that huge tree there and trying not to fall off. It was just really fun, late at night, and it was great.