What is this blog? This blog will serve as an outlet and hopefully a repo of links and resources and fatherly wisdom from myself (maybe some others) around the art and craft of data science.
What this blog is not. A place where I go into detail. Details are for you to explore. You must learn by doing and reading and coding and working problems on your own. The best way to learn is to sit down with a problem, read about tools, find a solution and then work through, then fail, then fail again and again and again… until you get it. Then you will never forget how to solve that problem. Then you should go back and solve it again a different way. If there is one key to success in life it is that. (FYI: there is my first piece of fatherly advice).
So the other day I began writing up a list of techniques and tools that I feel all data scientists should know. Not a list of algos or mathematical concepts but of basic tools for getting around, what we call the backend. It is suppose to serve as a primer for analysts and backend devs and mostly data scientists. The first series of post that I will write will follow that list of tools, perhaps why I think Spark is kind of cool but also kind of a religion (I’m an atheist so thats not a good thing), why there will always be a place for MySQL and Postgres, why the term growth hacking and Big Data are just plain stupid and why I think that a lot of sales guys and sales engineers are the devil.
So who am I? I am the senior technical lead of data science at Humin… formally the senior data scientist at Sellpoints and before that the marketing data scientist at Revolve clothing. I have a masters degree in pure math with a focus on algebraic geometry and category theory, and an under graduate degree in neuro-behavioral sciences from UMDCP with a focus on pure mathematics (logic and abstract algebra). I was also a class “away” from a degree in philosophy as well but promptly talked out of going “all the way” from every philosophy grad student I was friends with. My dreams of studying at the Sorbonne, smoking too many hand rolled "cigs" and climbing at Fontainebleau on the weekends were quickly put to rest, though I still think about it here and there and perhaps in my retirement.
I decided though to move to the next best place for climbing that didn’t require a passport, California. And specifically the Bay. In my previous life here in the Bay I worked in the non-profit sector and taught “under-served” youth math and science. My first introduction to data science actually came when I had the idea of using our database of donors and the data there to be able to predict out who and when we should hit them up for money… I will write a full post on how I think that non-profists and start-ups are actually the same beast under a different name here shortly but first things first.
I have two beautiful and amazing children Connor, 4 and Emma 10 months and an amazing and VERY VERY understanding wife Jen. She is amazing not only for the fact that she put up with me in grad school, has moved twice now for my career, and while I was poor and working for non-profits but she also gave me two hilarious and amazing children that are both a little too much like me and basically (though she wont admit it all the time) her life a very stressful existence.
So thats it. Thats who I am. And hold on tight… I plan to take you through the life and process of what it is to be a data scientist in the Bay, FYI the sexiest job of the 21st century according to Business week… but what in the fuck to business people know about data and science in the first place ;) .
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