Category: Uncategorized
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The geocentric model of the solar system is “mechanistically wrong”
The geocentric model of the solar system is “mechanistically wrong”, but still predictive of where the planets will appear against the backdrop of the far away stars. In Statistical Rethinking, McElreath (image credit) shows how the geocentric model of the solar system and linear regression applied in analytics can be similarly predictive without being accurately…
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Woke up to $6245 missing from my checking account this morning
Inexcusable mistakes | Fast & Slow Dev Cycles | Centralized or Distributed Data Teams I was listening to Benjamin Rogojan’s interview with Ethan Aaron on data team structures. Ben asks which model Ethan supports, centralized vs embedded in business units and Ethan explains the pros and cons of each. One of the points Ethan made…
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Recovering Transaction Costs
I sheepishly paid a BLM campground fee for $3 with a check and self critically remembered the scene from Big Lebowski when “the Dude” buys cream in his bathrobe with a check. It’s easy to imagine the labor cost of cashing such a low value check exceeds the nightly fee (including the Golden Eagle passholder…
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PSA: Respect other people’s time
Don’t make them think they’re getting fired… PSA – if you are using text or chat for business, don’t just write “hey” or “are you there”. Write everything needed with links and context to your question or request so that you facilitate asynchronous work. This and 19 more tips from Arjun Mahadevan
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Family leave for the birth of a baby in the US is woefully inadequate.
I made this infographic in Tableau with the Maven Analytics playground data – modified to reflect FMLA laws and child development typical phase by week from Parents.com. Maven Family Leave Challenge
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CUBE functions in Excel
When I found pivot tables (circa 2007) and learned how to add calculated fields to them (i.e. to calculate weighted averages) I was astonished how powerful they are. Recently I learned that you can code your own “pivot tables” with more flexible formatting using CUBE functions. XLookup and cube functions both allow the developer to…
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Data Portability – Currency of the future?
One of the reasons that blogging on LinkedIn is a questionable long-run strategy is that its not indexed and organized to be easy to find later. The news feed is meant to be addictive and interactive in the moment, not optimized to log material in-depth on a topic. It seems intentionally hard to find your…
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Pareto Part 2 – Efficiency
Thinking about Pareto charts made me remember the Econ 101 lectures I attended on Kaldor-Hicks efficiency vs Pareto’s definition of efficiency. Pareto’s view of efficiency is extremely narrow — it requires that no exchange be made unless each individual party is made better off, or at least no worse off from the exchange. The Kaldor-Hicks…
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Pareto Charts and the 80/20 Rule
Vilfredo Pareto was an economist who, among major accomplishments, identified that 80% of Italian wealth was held by only 20% of the population. The distribution is even more skewed today than in his time. Weirdly, most people don’t associate Pareto with income inequaility, but instead with Whale or Pareto Charts. These charts show a cumulative…
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Entire distribution: Statistical Rethinking Wk 2
A big focus of lecture 2 of Richard McElreath’s course Statistical Rethinking is that in Bayesian analysis you may report some summary measures such as intervals within the posterior. He points out that you could create an infinite number of intervals around different centers (Mean, Median, etc) and that the method doesn’t dictate which central…
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