[FRIAM] Sorting Algorithm? AI? Identifying "types" within data

[Eric Charles]

Greetings all,
I'm hoping someone here could help out. Let's imagine I had some data where
each row was a person's career. We could list major events every year.

For example: 2004 they were highered, 2007 they get a promotion, 2010 they
leave for a different company, 2012 they come back at a higher level, 2015
get a promotion, then no change until 2022.

Let's say I had data like this for roughly 2 million people, and that there
are around 10 different types of changes that could happen during any time
period (could be yearly, quarterly, monthly, I can make it how I want).

I was hoping we could ask a computer to tell us if there were "types of
careers" that people had. We could say "put all these careers into 4
buckets" or "7 buckets" based on similarity. Then we could look at the
piles the computer made and try to make sense of them.

One type might be "company man" for people who tend to stay in place for 20
or more years, another type could be a "rotator", who leaves and returns
every 3 years or so. Etc. The point is, I want a computer to make the piles
for me, rather than trying to come up with potential piles a priori.

Are there methods for doing this? I know it's a problem we've *talked*
about a lot, but I don't know if there are solutions.

Any help would be appreciated.

Best,
Eric

<echarles at american.edu>
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