Aspiring data scientists and other visitors to this site often repeat the same questions. This post is the definitive collection of my answers to such questions (which may evolve over time). How do I become a data scientist? It depends on your situation. Before we get into it, have you thought about why you want to become a data scientist? Hmm… Not really. Why should I become a data scientist?...
I recently finished reading the book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan. The book criticises nutritionism – the idea that one should eat according to the sum of measured nutrients while ignoring the food that contains these nutrients. The key argument of the book is that since the knowledge derived using food science is still very limited, completely relying on the partial findings and tools provided by this science is likely to lead to health issues....
The hype around big data has caused many organisations to hire data scientists without giving much thought to what these data scientists are going to do and whether they’re actually needed. This is a source of frustration for all parties involved. This post discusses some questions you should ask yourself before deciding to hire your first data scientist. Q1: Do you know what data scientists do? Somewhat surprisingly, there are quite a few companies that hire data scientists without having a clear idea of what data scientists actually do....
One of my favourite blog posts in recent times is The Log: What every software engineer should know about real-time data’s unifying abstraction by Jay Kreps. That post comprehensively describes how abstracting all the data produced by LinkedIn’s various components into a single log pipeline greatly simplified their architecture and enabled advanced data-driven applications. Among the various technical details there are some beautifully-articulated business insights. My favourite one defines data’s hierarchy of needs:...