Hi! I’m Maarten - experimental psychology PhD, enthusiastic R user, and data scientist.

I spent over a decade studying eye movements and the human visual system, before finally deciding that academia isn’t for me. In search of real impact and actual teamwork, I leveraged the technical and methodological skills I’d built up over the years and converted myself into a data science professional in 2015. Would recommend, it’s been great and immensely fulfilling!

Why R? Because it’s the most fun language that will get your data science work done. My personal journey has been C - MATLAB - Python - R, and I’ve appreciated aspects of all of these languages (even MATLAB!). But nothing stimulates the creativity like R does, and no other language is for all its quirks as interesting, and has as diverse a community of users.

About the double-a in my name - I currently live in Leicester (UK), but am originally a Dutch-speaking Belgian (Flemish). You can call me Martin, but not Marteen.

I originally started this as the website of my consultancy company but have since split it off to have a bit more freedom for random thoughts and other digressions. For any professional questions, just head over to the Contact section of that site!

When I’m not either doing data science or catching up on data science blogs and Twitter controversies, you can find me doing not much at all, or perhaps running in or around Leicester at an intermediate speed.

My favourite book is Any Human Heart. I have loved Iron & Wine for many years now. Secrets & Lies is my evergreen film tip. As a Belgian I must enjoy drinking Belgian beers, and I do. Try Orval at least once in your life. You might also find me convincing people that cycling really is not a boring spectator sport. Am I a hipster, or have old Belgian traditions just become hip? You decide.