A recent survery of data scientists by CrowdFlower found that, when it comes to challenges Dirty data is the #1 hurdle… My own experience leads me to agree. Access to good quality data remains a huge problem. Organizations would do well to invest in improving the quality of their data before boosting their analytics capabilities. Garbage in, garbage out. One error I see made regularly … [Read more...]
What’s hot at the 2015 Strata+Hadoop World conference?
It’s always refreshing to see data scientists turn the tools on themselves. Gives the field credibility. Benedikt Koehle looked at the frequency of ngrams in the abstracts for the 2015 Strata+Hadoop World conference. He concluded, as a result of this analysis, that 2015 will be probably known as the “Spark Strata” He also notes the resurgence of interest in R, at the expense … [Read more...]
Paying by Numbers—Should Data Scientists Receive Performance Based Compensation?
Learning Tree International just published another of my articles. I recently read an opinion that data analysts will start to be paid for performance. My article is presents an opposing view. While there are jobs where performance can be measured in isolation, I don't believe that data science is one of them. Read the article for my full argument. … [Read more...]
Free on-line data science courses from Stanford
Stanford has a number of free on-line courses in session that might be of interest to data scientists. They started last week, but you can still join. Statistical Learning The Statistical Learning course is an introductory-level course in supervised learning with a focus on regression and classification methods. The course uses R, and the text book, "An Introduction to Statistical Learning with … [Read more...]
Test your knowledge of R
Think your R knowledge is good? Well, put your money where your mouth is and take the Base R Assessment. You'll be presented with 20 random questions from a pool of 74 (currently). Once you have completed the test, you'll receive a ranking showing where you sit compared to all the others who have taken the test. If you score less than 10, then we're here to help... … [Read more...]