Nguyet Anh Nguyen
My favourite things
About me
I am currently based in Cambridge, MA after having lived in Hanoi, Singapore, Oxford and London. I have a background in economics but have a keen interest in analytics, history and politics. In my free time, I love learning new skills from online courses, honing my data analysis skills and reading books. I recently picked up Mandarin Chinese and particularly enjoy practicing Chinese characters.
What’s here?
Some MOOC courses that I’ve taken
Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python
I took this course to gain a deeper understanding of programming and learn how to think algorithmically.
- Platform: edX
- Link to course
- Link to assignment code
- Programming language used:
Python
Course review: 9/10
What I like
- The pace of the course is just right. It is quite challenging to work through the algorithmic way of thinking but not impossible for beginners.
- The coding assignments are really fun to work on. It is important to have a strategy plan on pen and paper before coding.
- Although the level of interaction with the lecturer is limited, he is very clear at explaning difficult concepts.
What could be improved
- The last lecture on sorting algorithms seems quite packed. I wish they could spread the lecture over a few weeks and go through the algorithms in greater detail.
Machine Learning
Since Machine Learning has been widely discussed, I wanted to find out what it actually means. This is the introductory course for machine learning. Topics include supervised learning, unsupervised learning and best practices in machine learning.
- Platform: Coursera
- Link to course
- Link to assignment code
- Programming language used:
MATLAB. There is an option to isOctave
Course review: 9/10
What I like
- The pace of the course is appropriate for absolute beginners. Prior to taking the course, I had taken courses in statistics but not been exposed to machine learning. It is very easy to follow the lectures.
- Progamming assignments are lightweight and aim at gaining an understanding of simple algorithms rather than coding.
- The course is very well-structured and covers different machine learning topics at introductory level.
- The lecturer explain things very clearly.
What could be improved
- The lecturer could have broken down the maths of derivatives further in the lesson on neural network.
Data Analysis for Social Scientists
I have long been interested in international development, especially after reading Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. I also really liked the randomized controlled trials that J-PAL was doing. So I decided to take this course to learn methods for analyzing data to answer questions of economic and policy interest.
- Platform: edX
- Link to course
- Link to assignment code
- Programming language used:
R
Course review: 9/10
What I like
- The lecturers explain very well how statistical techniques could be used to solve real-world economic problems in developing countries.
- I like the comprehensive review of probability and statistics at the start of the course.
- The assignments are often based on academic research on real-world problems.
What could be improved
- Some of the solutions to the econometrics assignments could be better explained.
My data analysis projects
k-means clustering
I implemented k-means clustering algorithm and applied it to a two-dimensional dataset.
- Link to code
- Progamming language used:
Python
Coronavirus outbreak
During social distancing, I thought it would be a nice idea to explore the trends directly from the data instead of browsing too much news on the Internet. Overall, I tried to plot the epidemic trajectories by country.
- Link to code
- Progamming language used:
Python
Below is the key finding from my analysis. The plot shows the death trajectories of some countries of interest. It is clear that East Asian countries are doing a better job at keeping deaths at bay than their western counterparts at least as of March.
Rural health insurance in China
I completed the master’s thesis as part of my MSc in Economics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Given my interest in public economics and international development, I chose to research the public insurance for rural residents in China who are likely to experience poverty. I want to find out whether having the health insurance would encourage rural residents to seek preventive care. Below is an abstract of my thesis.
In 2011, China surprised the world by announcing that it had achieved near universal health insurance coverage for the population of 1.3 billion. This miracle chiefly results from the constant and rigorous initiatives by the government with a strong focus on rural residents who are considered vulnerable. It is important to ask whether universal insurance coverage has made the Chinese public health system more efficient. This paper examines the presence of ex-ante moral hazard in the Rural New Cooperative Medical Scheme. Using the data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey in a logistic regression model, the paper finds that a more generous insurance scheme leads to a 1.2% to 1.5% decrease in the probability of using preventive care. The effect is small but statistically significant. While this suggests the presence of ex-ante moral hazard, the evidence is not strong and based on certain assumptions.
- Link to code
- Programming language used:
R
Books
I aim to read 10-12 books a year and write reviews on Goodreads. I usually read non-fiction books and my favorite topics are history and politics. I sometimes read fiction and self-help books. At the moment, I’m reading “Journey to the West” by Wu Cheng’en and it is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
Recently read books
The Sorrow Of War: A Novel of North Vietnam
by Bảo Ninh
by Anna Burns
The Econocracy: The Perils of Leaving Economics to the Experts
by Joe Earle
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
by Hans Rosling
The book is well-written and provides interesting insights on how we could be wrong about the world. The ideas are presented in a concise and succinct. I really enjoyed reading the book, as much as I enjoy watching Hans’ videos.