sophiexsun / sophiexsun.github.io

Sophie's Site

Welcome to Sophie's Site

As a working professional learning to code, to think statistically, to approach problems by data visualization and modeling, I'm excited to present here what I have worked on. I have a prior life before I become a statistician, I was a craftsman.

About me

I worked in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry for the first decade in the 21st century, mainly as Product Developer, throughout the whole supply chain: manufacturing, wholesale and retail. I oversaw how products are made, priced, packaged and shipped. My prior career is an embodiment of globalization.

• I developed products such as lingerie, underwear, luggage, and hiking backpack, from its conceptualization with its multi-dimensional and often competing goals in mind, to rounds of prototyping with overseas sample makers, to ocean container shipping across the Pacific to North and South Americas.

• I computed profit margin for each product that I developed, including every cost factor on the link from ex work to the delivery at a seaport or warehouse. Yes I lived through the nightmarish US-China trade war, when tarrifs were adjusted every few months and new balances had to be reached along the whole supply chain.

The Joy of Making Stuff

I was trained to make block patterns, drape, cut and sew, and embelish garments, as well as fashion forecasting, consumer behavior, textile technology, and research methodology, at the Apparel Product Design and Merchandising program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. If I lived two generations ago, I'd perfect my craftmanship in making dresses. Now in 2021, dresses are mostly designated to special occassions. Garments are more about functionality. Moreover, consumer goods and retail business (and all its upstream inputs) are re-orienting in the pandemic landscape.

The Fun of Seeing Stuff

Statistics is about seeing things not visible to naked eyes. And it got many lenses (algorithms, axioms, encapsulated into models, functions, formulas). As humans, we have biological limitations on what we can see. With equipment, such as binocular, telescope, microscpe, we are equipped to see a lot more! That's the fun in statistics: finding that perfect lens to see things otherwise invisible. Find patterns and orders in chaos.

I'll add what I see and how I see them from the works I've done.