Dr. Randal S. Olson
I’ve worked in AI for 15+ years, starting in research and moving into applied work and company building.
I’m co-founder and CTO of Goodeye Labs, where we build Truesight, which helps businesses enforce quality standards on their AI.
On the side, I write about data science and AI. Past projects include TPOT (an early AutoML tool) and using AI to compute the optimal U.S. road trip.
Selected work
Projects and tools I’ve built.
A mix of research software, data visualizations, and the current focus at Goodeye Labs.
Truesight
Helps businesses enforce quality standards on their AI. Domain experts define what "good" looks like, and engineers, agents, and workflows build against it. The current focus.
Goodeye Labs
Teaching an AI Agent to Make Beautiful Charts
A running series where an AI agent makes data visualizations, the Tufte Test scores them, and the scoring criteria stay in public view.
blog series
TPOT: Automated Machine Learning
A Python AutoML tool that optimizes ML pipelines using genetic programming. Built on scikit-learn and cited thousands of times.
open source
Optimal U.S. Road Trip
Used a genetic algorithm to solve the traveling salesman problem across all 50 U.S. states. 13,699 miles of optimal driving, and replicated for dozens of countries since.
data viz
Women in STEM: The Data Story
Visualized gender distribution across U.S. college majors from 1970 to 2012, surfacing the engineering gap.
data viz
Name Age Calculator
Predicts age from a first name using Social Security baby-name data and actuarial tables. Based on FiveThirtyEight’s methodology.
interactive tool
Writing
Recent writing.
Data science, AI, data visualization, and the occasional history deep dive. I write for people who want the analysis and the takeaway, not a lecture.
Latest
Every Atlantic hurricane track, 1980 to 2025
Every Atlantic tropical cyclone from 1980 to 2025 on one map. The shape of the basin and the deadliest storms of 46 seasons emerge from the density.
- 6 min
U.S. oil: from peak importer to net exporter in one decade
The U.S. imported a record 13.7 MMb/d of oil in 2005. By 2025 it exports 2.8 MMb/d more than it imports. Here is what actually changed.
- 4 min
A thousand springs in Kyoto, in one chart
Kyoto's 1,200-year cherry blossom record shows modern decades hold the earliest cluster of blooms ever seen. A warming signal written in flowers.
- 6 min
130 years of Boston Marathon winning times
John Korir broke a 15-year-old Boston Marathon course record in 2026. The full 1897-2026 arc shows why, and what the women's line has been doing.
- 5 min
Libraries were transforming. Then COVID hit.
Two decades of IMLS data show U.S. libraries were successfully pivoting from book warehouses to community hubs. Then the pandemic set the transformation back years.
- 6 min
The Claude Code leak in four charts: half a million lines, three accidents, forty tools
Community mirrors of the @anthropic-ai/claude-code npm package spilled 513k lines of TypeScript. Four charts break down what was inside.
- 6 min
Every generation rediscovers art: 270 years of cultural interests in one chart
Engraving dominated the 1800s until photography killed it. 270 years of book data show how every generation picks its own art forms.
- 5 min
The rise and fall of bowling in the United States
The U.S. had roughly 12,000 bowling alleys at the peak of the bowling boom in the mid-1960s. By 2023, only 3,154 remained.
Background
About me.
The short version: 15+ years in AI, starting in research and moving into applied work and company building.
I did my Ph.D. at Michigan State in computer science, focused on evolutionary algorithms and the evolution of intelligence, and then a postdoc at Penn. After that I spent years on applied ML and AI strategy, most recently as Head of AI Strategy at AE Studio.
Outside of work, I write about data science and AI here. A few of those projects found an audience beyond the blog: TPOT (AutoML), the optimal U.S. road trip, and a widely-shared visualization of gender distribution across U.S. college majors. Over the years, various bits of my writing have been covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, and FiveThirtyEight.
These days, most of my time goes to Goodeye Labs. We help businesses enforce quality standards on their AI. Most businesses already know what “good” looks like for them; they just lack a streamlined way to communicate that to the people and systems building their AI. Truesight closes that communication gap.
- Based in
- Anacortes, WA
- Role
- Co-founder & CTO, Goodeye Labs
- Ph.D.
- Michigan State University, 2015
- Publications
- 50+ peer-reviewed, ~6,600 citations
Contact
Get in touch.
If you want to work together, talk about LLM evaluations, or nerd out about something specific, drop me a line. Email is best.