About the Project

Financial markets are built on the concept of debt. The latest stats suggest that an average American household is in $137,063 in debt. Most of people carry debt, it is used to cover education cost, housing, big purchases, fill in work/pay gaps, medical costs, etc.

The debt is a very useful financial instrument people can tap into when they have needs. This is a big market and there are many different types of loan applications. However, not every application ends up being approved. The objective of our project is to look into complex relationships in the loan markets and try to shed some light on the moving factors as well as look for special relationships. Our analysis will be based on financial loan data provided by Kaggle by Lending Club. The data stretches from 2007 to 2018 and includes accepted and rejected loan applications.

Data Sources:

Jason Baker

Jason Baker is a civilian analytic methodologist for the United States Department of Defense. His current work supports a data-centric transition for operations offices, enabling decisive advantages to policymakers, military, first responders, and international partners. He has deployed to Iraq, and most recently to Afghanistan where he began the foundational transition to data-driven tactical operations. Jason has also served two civilian tours in Germany and the United Kingdom. He holds a M.S. in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems from Murray State University (Kentucky) and a Bachelor of Arts in Geology from Hanover College (IN).

Jia Lu

Jia Lu managers the Marketing Analytics and Data Science team at National Funding. Prior to that, she worked as an Expert Analyst in Analytics Engineering at Experian. She received her PhD from Florida State University in Communication and Marketing.

Brian Neesby

Brian Neesby is the CIO of the NC State Board of Elections. Prior to this role, he was the Chief Data Officer. Brian has served as a fact witness, been deposed several times, and executed numerous declarations on behalf of the State Board to testify concerning his knowledge of North Carolina’s election data. He investigated data discrepancies in Durham county for the March 2016 Primary and decoded binary files on the county’s tabulation terminal to prove that a county employee had fraudulently manipulated election results; such work resulted in a grand jury indictment. Before working at the State Board, Brian functioned as the sole developer and chief data steward for Toyota’s nation-wide Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act database platform, which facilitated testing and legal compliance. Brian routinely analyzed large-scale inventory and user management datasets, investigated and resolved data gaps, and managed data interfaces for Toyota’s Global Audit Support System. Brian also has a Bachelors Degree in Political Science from UCLA and a Juris Doctorate (JD) from Loyola Law School in California, where he passed the Bar Exam.

Edina Tankovic

Edina Tankovic is a director in Quantitative Research at JPMorgan Chase bank. She is financial service professional for global equities trading strategies and risk management. Prior to this role in JPMorgan Chase Edina ran the business intelligence team in North America for equities trading, implemented risk management for Program Trading, and built many applications in proprietary trading division of the bank. Before her roles at JPMorgan Chase Edina worked at Lehman Brothers in London and acted as a translator for the United Nations NGO during the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian Civil War. Edina holds BSc. in Computer Science from Royal Holloway, University of London, and she won the medal for the best student in graduating year for her department. Edina is a firm believer that every piece to data tells the story and that job of Data Scientists is to make that story available to people who could benefit from it