I'm hiring.

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I'm looking for a data clerk on a 3 month contract. I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia.

I'd be managing this person, and I'm arguably an Aspie (though I have to allow for the possibility that I'm affecting autism to legitimise my lack of people skills). I think a high-functioning autistic would excel in the sort of position I'm trying to fill, as it's solitary work, and involves finding patterns or similarities in very large sets of data (basically, I have a list of 160,000 people and I want to know who's in the list more than once, even though their names or addresses might differ enough that the computer hasn't identify them).

It would be best if you've finished high school, and I need you to be able to communicate well in English, even if only in writing.

Respond here, and I'll check in the next couple of days to see if there are any takers (I am advertising this job more conventionally, but I really think an Aspie would be good at it).

I'm looking for a data clerk on a 3 month contract. I'm in Vancouver, British Columbia

Sylvius, it's terrific you're advertising work on WP.
I'm unable to apply, but wow...I will email Alex P re mabye ?job site ? Perhaps he has already considered... mabye too uncontrollable a task.

Anyways, if your intent is genuine, - how would WP know?
No offense intended. just surprised.

The offer is genuine. I know a lot of Aspies have trouble finding jobs through normal avenues, so I'm trying to offer a side-door for this one job, because I think an Aspie would be really good at it.

Thie final decision probably isn't mine, but so far we're having a terrible time finding any applicants at all, so any applicant at this point has a really good chance of being the only applicant.

I live in Vancouver.
I was just finding some job to do and make some money during the sumer, while I find a professor for my grad research.

I don't know if I qualify since I graduated from high school a long while ago, and university a little while ago.

Is your data in a digital database? Sorting the data with respect to different categories may help. If the database is well organized it should be a breeze. If it's in Excel and poorly organized, the task can be a major headache.

Is it also possible that multiple people can have the same names (first, last, and even middle)? In such a case, how would you verify the uniqueness of the entry?
It may also be possible that some entries were incorrectly inputted. From a practical approach, a truncation may work well. With such a vast database size, I would expect at least some unimportant entries.

How do you go about applying?

To the poster above: if it's in excel, it can easily be imported into a SQL server. Anything with a standard format, including CSV and tab-delimited, would be pretty easy to get into a database. As for the typos, you could check for them using scripts, queries, regular expressions, for example linking any entries with 1 character displaced, added, or missing... etc. Quite a few different techniques could be used.

I was just saying that sloppy data input can render a database difficult to interpret. By organization, I meant to say consistency in data input.

There could be any combination of errors in the input process - miscategorization, being sloppy entering data, multiple instances of the same person with different contact info (work & residence), etc. And when entering data in Excel, problems like this tend to amplify, since it's bareboned and there is no restriction on the type of input values.

I suppose it has a lot of do with the initial data collection process that determines the amount of work later.

That's why I'm looking for a clerk. I could have someone listed as both Michael and Mike (and M.J.). I could have a woman listed under both her married and maiden name, but with the same e-mail address. I need someone to look at a stream of data and find the patterns in a way that I can't reasonably teach a computer to do.

The data currently resides in SQL Server (with an annoying proprietary front-end, but I can get the data out easily enough).

There may well be multiple different people (dozens, even) with the same name, but at different locations. We might even have the same person listed twice at two different addresses. This is why I can't have the computer find the duplicates - the computer would make too many mistakes (I estimate we could approach 85% accuracy if we tried to write a query to do the work).

I want someone to take a giant data table (160,000 records long) and identify which people in the list appear in the list more than once. I'd suggest sorting the table by last name and first name and making one pass, and then sorting by postal code and last name and making a second pass.

You'd be starting at the same batch of data for at least a few weeks.

Hi Sylvius,

Just a couple of questions.

What part of Vancouver?

Is there a possibility for an extension after three months?

The office is in Kitsilano.

There isn't much chance of an extension past those three months working for me (I already have an assistant, but he's away for a few months), but depending on your skills there are always opportunities here.

I'll pm you the link to the job posting.

Got it Sylvius. Thanks!

there is a program called Canada Summer Jobs that provides financial incentives to hiring students.

http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/epb/ ... scpp.shtml

Apparently my partner has relatives in Kits. And apparently it's not very nice there. But apparently a lot of places in Canada aren't
very nice according to her!!

That link will be helpful to other peeps that are interested.

Kitsilano is alright. The residential and bussiness areas could be better arranged, but it's still pretty good. I live in the Point Grey area, which is slightly more serene than Kits. But living in an apartment does present its own issues.
I want a big mension by the ocean.