Street Fighting Data Science
47
Street Fighting Data Science Pete Skomoroch @peteskomoroch O’Reilly Strata Conference February 28, 2012
-
Upload
peter-skomoroch -
Category
Documents
-
view
2.264 -
download
5
description
Practical problem solving with data involves more than just visualization or applying the latest machine learning techniques. Intuition, domain knowledge, and reasonable approximations can mean the difference between a successful model and a catastrophic failure. We’ll dive into some best practices I’ve extracted from solving real world problems like computing trending topics, cleaning election data, and ranking experts on social networks.New analysts or engineers are often lost when textbook approaches fail on real world data. Drawing inspiration from problem solving techniques in mathematics and physics, we will walk through examples that illustrate how come up with creative solutions and solve problems with big data.
Transcript of Street Fighting Data Science
Street Fighting Data Science
Pete Skomoroch@peteskomoroch
O’Reilly Strata ConferenceFebruary 28, 2012
To solve hard problems:
Think like a street fighter
Analyze
Improvise
Anticipate
Adapt
How does this apply to Data Science?
Pricing model decreases profit in test stores by 30%
What went wrong?
• Ran complex “black box” model
• Didn’t analyze the data first
• Didn’t anticipate elasticity errors
How could this have been avoided?
The Men Who Stare at Charts
Look at your data
Raw Data: FEC Contributions
retired 32938self-employed 25454information requested per best efforts 1313homemaker 4992the bank of new york 65john mccain 2008 57u.s. government 121idt corp. 54merrill lynch 273blank rome l.l.p. 51department of defense 100u.s. army 90us army 141none 642greenberg traurig 118northrop grumman 105at&t 141citigroup 134bridgewater associates 44univision communications inc. 36
not employed 118672self employed 92973information requested 17627refused 728unemployed 1493self-employed 5919university of california 825microsoft 915university of chicago 616harvard university 848google 662stanford university 716university of washington 614ibm 1016columbia university 782university of michigan 514freelance 372sa 150sidley austin llp 509na 999
retired 32938self-employed 25454information requested per best efforts 1313homemaker 4992the bank of new york 65john mccain 2008 57u.s. government 121idt corp. 54merrill lynch 273blank rome l.l.p. 51department of defense 100u.s. army 90us army 141none 642greenberg traurig 118northrop grumman 105at&t 141citigroup 134bridgewater associates 44univision communications inc. 36
not employed 118672self employed 92973information requested 17627refused 728unemployed 1493self-employed 5919university of california 825microsoft 915university of chicago 616harvard university 848google 662stanford university 716university of washington 614ibm 1016columbia university 782university of michigan 514freelance 372sa 150sidley austin llp 509na 999
Katherine Alexandra
“Don't indulge in any unnecessary, sophisticated moves. You'll get clobbered if you do, and in a street fight you'll have your shirt zipped off you.”
- Bruce Lee
Look at your errors
• Sanity check row counts
• Track errors over time
• Find patterns in the error data
• Add missing features to models
• Replace models entirely
Analyze
Improvise
Anticipate
Adapt
Think like a street fighter
![[Explosives and Weapons] Paul Wellard - Secrets of Street Fighting](https://static.fdocuments.in/doc/165x107/55cf9b63550346d033a5e01e/explosives-and-weapons-paul-wellard-secrets-of-street-fighting.jpg)
