Hi there!
It’s Kan from Exploratory.
Summer is finally over, my son has started his school, I feel a bit of breeze in the house. Phew… ;)
Anyway, here’s this week’s update!
What We Are Reading
What Data Scientists Really Do, According to 35 Data Scientists - Link
The world of Data Science is changing rapidly, but it’s always about helping the business or stakeholders make better decisions based on data.
“One result of this rapid change is that the vast majority of my guests tell us that the key skills for data scientists are not the abilities to build and use deep-learning infrastructures. Instead they are the abilities to learn on the fly and to communicate well in order to answer business questions, explaining complex results to nontechnical stakeholders. Aspiring data scientists, then, should focus less on techniques than on questions. New techniques come and go, but critical thinking and quantitative, domain-specific skills will remain in demand.”
Beware of ‘storytelling’ in data and analytics - Link
Many people tend to spend a lot of their times and resources on storytelling and data visualization when they start getting into data. Both of them are important and that’s a great entry point. But also, statistics, statistical/quantitative thinking, machine learning, data wrangling, etc. are equally important. If you want to develop a great career in the world of data or even the world of business, you want to make sure you spend enough time learning the harder subjects. (Sorry, I know I’ve just bored you to death…, but this is true!)
A conversation with Hadley Wickham - Link
When Hadley Wickham speaks, you listen. Or, at least for me. There is always something you can learn from this man. In this interview, he talks about why you want to pick R (hint: the great community!) and why you want to tidy data.
Here’s how China rules using data, AI, and internet surveillance - Link
I don’t think anybody better than Chinese government when it comes to using Data and AI. This is a great social and political ‘experiment’ of what would happen when you can collect any data and use it with AI in any way possible without concerning ethics and privacy. It is not Science Fiction, it’s happening now.
Correlation between Facebook usage and Anti-refugee violence
TIL: in the huge viral splash on how ‘FB usage in Germany correlates to anti-refugee violence’, the only data used to determine ‘FB usage’ was engagement with Nutella Germany’s page.
— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) August 23, 2018
Maybe that is a good proxy. But why not use 20 brands?
Also, why didn’t the NYT mention this?
I wonder why they didn’t conclude that the popularity of Nutella is the one that correlates to anti-refugee violence, rather than Facebook. I understand that there are a lot of negative sentiments towards Facebook currently, but seeing all the media picking up anything as long as they can write negatively about Facebook is just disgusting.
The time like now, we need to try harder to ask questions and find answers for ourselves in order to pursue the truth. And yes, that’s where data comes in rescue, though don’t forget you want to have a sounds statistical thinking skill, too! ;)
And this is another example that the storytelling is just dangerous sometimes especially when it is politically motivated.
I don’t like Notebooks - Link
This is specifically about Jupyter Notebook, which is probably the most well used tool by data scientists who program with Python. It is a fun and entertaining summary of why you should not use it. People often challenge me on why you need a programming to do data science, but most of those relying on a tool like Jupyter Notebook which doesn’t provide a productive and reproducible environment is just ironic. 🤔
Quote of the Week
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
by Mark Twain
What We Are Writing
Here are some blog posts I have written last week.
What We Are Working On
Exploratory v5.0
When you have a lot of data frames in the same project, it becomes harder to organize them. So we are adding Folder support in v5.0. You can create a folder and simply drag-and-drop data frames into it.
You can organize your Dashboard, Note, Slides, Scripts as well!
We’re still on track to release v5.0 in this October!
That’s it for this week.
Have a wonderful week!
Kan CEO/Exploratory
This is a weekly email update of what I have seen in Data Science / AI and thought were interesting, plus what Team Exploratory is working on.