Thank you to Albert Kim (Smith College) and Johanna Hardin (Pomona College) for the Google Calendar assignment idea. They credit Roger Peng’s and Hilary Parker’s Not So Standard Deviations podcast titled “Compromised Shoe Situation” for the inspiration. In the podcast, Peng and Parker discuss a data science design challenge on getting to work on time.

The title of this project is a play on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book series by Jeff Kinney. Kat and her kids were reading A LOT of those books in her house during COVID-19 isolation. Many of the titles in the series felt equally applicable here:

• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: Cabin Fever
• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: The Last Straw
• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: The Ugly Truth
• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: Hard Luck
• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: The Long Haul
• Diary of a [Data Science Student]: Old School
• The [Data Science Student] Do-It-Yourself Book