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This is the best line in the entire (interesting) post.
Doing some kind of public work will make your next job hunt so much easier. Whether that is SO answers, a blog, or a github profile, showing bests telling.
> http://varianceexplained.org/images/network2.jpeg
This shows "git" and "github" in a separate cluster from "C++" and "Python"? I don't understand this. These tools are used regardless of what other technologies are being used. For example, there are many Python and many C++ projects on github.
I always liked data crunching, databases and data topics in general. Also, most of the software development knowledge I have I didn't learn in the official school curriculum, but rather from books, online courses and real-world experience. Now, having that in mind, how realistic is for a guy in mid-30s, a very good software developer (enthusiastic about functional programming, if that matters) to pick up enough knowl…
While people can often focus on applying the latest deep learning thought-vector approach to their BIG DATA, there's an enormous gulf between the common condition of data and this aspiration.
You don't need PhD level stats and machine learning to apply the things that many companies actually could benefit from. Storing, maintaining and managing the data properly is a start. Then working with the people in the business to get insights from the data they have. Often simple aggregations and visualisations can provide enormous benefit. Being able to show correlations, and sometimes even just being able to show how noisy things are can be important.
Big questions: How is reality different from what we think? How are these differences important for the company?
That might be a correlation that we don't expect, or a lack of one we think is there. Part of a next step might be to become more "pro-active" and design new experiments to answer questions that can't quite be answered yet due to a lack of data. Beyond that you're heading towards bringing a new feature into a product.
Does your current company have some data? Do they spend a lot of time emailing spreadsheets around, or have salesforce or a proper database? See if you can make something useful for your work that's based on an analysis of that data (and possibly do some work to smooth those workflows of passing data around).
I always liked data crunching, databases and data topics in general. Also, most of the software development knowledge I have I didn't learn in the official school curriculum, but rather from books, online courses and real-world experience. Now, having that in mind, how realistic is for a guy in mid-30s, a very good software developer (enthusiastic about functional programming, if that matters) to pick up enough knowl…
Ah man, I wanted that job. I guess I didn't waste enough time on the Internet answering questions during my PhD.
The article is a very nice write-up, but in the end he is still optimizing advertisement click-through rates (a zero-sum game). While interesting from a technical point of view, why not make yourself 1000x more useful to society by working, for example, on "cognitive health" problems? These are problems that lean heavily on statistics, and are interesting and imho more rewarding at the same time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is a very nice write-up, but in the end he is still optimizing advertisement click-through rates (a zero-sum game). While interesting from a technical point of view, why not make yourself 1000x more useful to society by working, for example, on "cognitive health" problems? These are problems that lean heavily on statistics, and are interesting and imho more rewarding at the same time.
Interesting, how is optimising advertisement CTR a zero-sum game? Just curious.
> In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s).
Advertisement is (to first approximation) zero-sum in the sense that what you sell, your competitor will not sell. The contribution to society of the advertisement is zero. You can say that you have provided the customer the service of making them aware of the product, but that is only in second approximation, as customers generally do not want this service. Also, they can only spend their money once. Further, ads cost money, so perhaps we can even call it a negative-sum game :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting, how is optimising advertisement CTR a zero-sum game? Just curious.
From wikipedia [1]: > In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). Advertisement is (to first approximation) zero-sum in the sense that what you sell, your competitor will not sell. The contribution to society of the adver…
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/the-work-behind...
I always liked data crunching, databases and data topics in general. Also, most of the software development knowledge I have I didn't learn in the official school curriculum, but rather from books, online courses and real-world experience. Now, having that in mind, how realistic is for a guy in mid-30s, a very good software developer (enthusiastic about functional programming, if that matters) to pick up enough knowl…
There is such a shortage of data scientists that most companies will settle for 2 out of 3 of the trinity of Stats, Programming and Domain Knowledge. If the candidate is smart enough, sometimes 1 out of 3 is enough.
> For that, I might look at another source of data, Stack Overflow Careers profiles, and see which technologies tend to be used by the same developers > http://varianceexplained.org/images/network2.jpeg This shows "git" and "github" in a separate cluster from "C++" and "Python"? I don't understand this. These tools are used regardless of what other technologies are being used. For example, there are many Python and m…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparity_filter_algorithm_of_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From wikipedia [1]: > In game theory and economic theory, a zero-sum game is a mathematical representation of a situation in which each participant's gain (or loss) of utility is exactly balanced by the losses (or gains) of the utility of the other participant(s). Advertisement is (to first approximation) zero-sum in the sense that what you sell, your competitor will not sell. The contribution to society of the adver…
I don't think advertising for jobs is a zero-sum game, especially if the matching algorithm is good enough to match employers and employees that had no knowledge of each other before. If you are able to reduce those search frictions, you have created value. Several economic professors won the Nobel prize for their work in this area: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/the-work-behind... https://en.wikipedia.…
Anyway, it would be nice to have the effects properly quantified.
