Hi! I’m Dr. Rachael Tatman. I’m a data scientist at Kaggle. Before that I was getting my PhD in Linguistics at the University of Washington, and before that I was an undergraduate student in linguistics & English literature at the college of William and Mary.
My research in grad school was mostly in computational sociolinguistics, especially how our social identity is reflected in how we use language online. If you’re interested in learning more about my work, my personal website is here.
When I’m not working, you can find me knitting, reading, playing games with my friends, or even upside down learning circus skills!
About images used on this blog: The vast majority of the images used on this blog are used under the CC or the GNU general public license of various flavors, or are in the public domain. In all cases, I’ve linked back to the original source of the image or have cited it in the picture’s caption, especially in the rare cases where I can’t find the image I need under one of the above licenses, in which case I make every attempt to find and contact the owner of the image. If you notice any images that you have ownership of, please contact me and I’ll be happy to take them down and direct you to the source where I found it.
Images that are my own (they’ll link to just the image and won’t have an attribution in the caption) are free for you to use and share under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.5) license. Basically, you can do whatever you like as long as you don’t make any money or claim that you made it. The exception is the blog header. Let me know if you’d like to use it and we can work it out. Thanks!
makingnoiseandhearingthings.com 
Great blog! Thanks for reassuring my decision to study linguistics.
Glad you like it.
Hello Rachael,
I was trying to search the history behind Bumpass Hell in Lassen National Park and somehow wound up at your site. I think I spelled it wrong. Anyway, in the process I came across the citation below. The etymology sounds fishy to me. But you might want to add it to your research on “bumpus.”
Joe
Bumpus Name Meaning
English: nickname, of Norman origin, for someone who was a swift walker, from Old French bon ‘good’ + pas ‘pace’. It may also have been a topographic name, with the second element used in the sense ‘passageway’. Compare Malpass.
Source: Dictionary of American Family Names ©2013, Oxford University Press
https://WWW.ANCESTRY.COM/NAME-ORIGIN?SURNAME=BUMPUS