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Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

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Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#1
I work in mergers & acquisitions (math major undergrad, Python classes) but enjoy looking at interesting financial and non-financial datasets in what little free time I have.

What project(s) have you worked on? Can a self-taught hobby data scientist produce solid/meaningful statistical analysis/results products?

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#2
While working as a Software QA Engineer at Apple, I wrote a large amount of statistical blog posts to get a breadth of skills outside of my role (story: http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving-apple/)

I did have a statistical background before starting at Apple however. Most of my projects were self-taught and done as self-research (I am not a fan of the take-a-million-MOOCs strategy everyone likes).

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#3
With a team of data-scientists-as-a-hobby, we are building www.17-56.cl, which displays insights from data about Chile. It is in Spanish, but feel free to look around. For example, I created a map that displays the votation in the Chilean primary elections: http://fernandoi.cl/mapascomunales/primarias/primarias.html. Simple, but informative and fun.

Probably as a hobby you will not be able to write an analysis that will get published in a paper, but there is a lot of descriptive analysis out there that can be very interesting.

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#4
post #3

With a team of data-scientists-as-a-hobby, we are building www.17-56.cl, which displays insights from data about Chile. It is in Spanish, but feel free to look around. For example, I created a map that displays the votation in the Chilean primary elections: http://fernandoi.cl/mapascomunales/primarias/primarias.html . Simple, but informative and fun. Probably as a hobby you will not be able to write an analysis that…

How do you know your statistical analysis is good?

I'm rereading my intro to stats book and would like to use those skills to make good analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#5

While working as a Software QA Engineer at Apple, I wrote a large amount of statistical blog posts to get a breadth of skills outside of my role (story: http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving-apple/ ) I did have a statistical background before starting at Apple however. Most of my projects were self-taught and done as self-research (I am not a fan of the take-a-million-MOOCs strategy everyone likes).

Thanks for the link!

I'm mostly interested in self-research.

How'd you know you were doing sound stats?

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#7

While working as a Software QA Engineer at Apple, I wrote a large amount of statistical blog posts to get a breadth of skills outside of my role (story: http://minimaxir.com/2017/05/leaving-apple/ ) I did have a statistical background before starting at Apple however. Most of my projects were self-taught and done as self-research (I am not a fan of the take-a-million-MOOCs strategy everyone likes).

Thanks for the link! I'm mostly interested in self-research. How'd you know you were doing sound stats?

Oh that's easy ... put money on it, it'll make you a better statistician in no time.

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#8

I'm really just wanting to do my own self research on topics and datasets that seem interesting, but also want to ensure the analysis im doing is sound.

Learn to cross validate. Typically by predicting something out-of-sample. Or by sense checking what your model says about things you're sure about.

Re: Ask HN: Do any of you do data science as a hobby?

#10
Yup, from time to time. I also use data science in one side of my business (online marketing), but as a hobby I periodically do data analysis of the computer game DOTA2.

There's a large (huge, actually) available dataset, and lots of interesting information you can mine comparatively easily.

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