Data Science Imposters Podcast

Jordy and Antonio meet after a vacation haitus or two. They talk space, life, and are even able to sneak in some data science. If you'd like to see our show continue, reach out to the hosts.

*Household name is a bit of exaggeration – but certainly a known name in the ML community. Today we are joined by Alex Beutel, KDD Cup co-chair and senior staff research scientist & tech lead / manager at Google to discuss the three projects for this year's KDD Cup. It's amazing the diversity in these Read More ...

We didn't always have ‘Data Science' but we've had data for ever. We're joined by Erin Stanton to learn about the evolution of Data Science in her work and personal life. Erin Stanton has 13+ years of experience in big data and data science and she currently runs the Global Client Support organization for Virtu Read More ...

Shain and Calvin join us to tell us all about NFTs. NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens – meaning they represent unique items – unlike currency which is fungible and can be aggregate or divided. NFTs could become a bigger industry than digital currencies so will you be an early adopter or late comer?

Antonio and Jordy are back at it. No guests, just the two hosts catching up after 3 months of relative silence. Antonio explains to Jordy why he is befuddled by the vaccine rollout … in addition, he asks whether the script he wrote to find a vaccine appointment is immoral … We’d like to hear Read More ...

What would you remember if you had better memory? In this episode we speak to the 2018 USA Memory Champion and Grandmaster of Memory, John Graham aka memoryjohn.com. As imposters, we have lots of questions. John answers them with the exactness that you’d expect from someone who continues to train their memory. John is a Read More ...

Today we are joined by Professor Margot Gerritsen from Stanford University today to talk to us about Math in Data Science, Diversity in Data Science, and some of the ideas behind a Growth Mindset. She is co-founder and co-director of the global Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference, reaching more than 120,000 participants annually in Read More ...

We’ve been doing this podcast for over three years and I’m surprised that we had never come across and discussed the topic of association rules. Association rules is a mining technique that allows you to find rules in your data. It’s pretty intuitive when you see it but we were so surprised how hard it Read More ...

Jordy and Antonio talk about the stock market. They focus on the data behind the stock market movements and also how you can get started investing in the stock market. Whether you have never traded in the market, are a buy-and-hold investor, or are an avid investor – you’ll enjoy this spirited conversation that could Read More ...

This episode is the panel discussion that we moderated two weeks ago for the Tom Tom Cities Rising Summit (https://www.tomtomfoundation.org/cities-rising-summit). Here’s the description provided for the event: Join regional data science leaders for a discussion that will touch on best practices for college graduates to mid-career professionals who are seeking rewarding employment opportunities, as well Read More ...

In this episode, Antonio explains to Jordy what he knows about feature engineering from work, Kaggle projects, and general research. Antonio talks about featuretools which he was able to use recently. Feature Engineering appears to be an area that could really enhance machine learning in significant ways. What do you think? Do we need experts Read More ...

In team sports, you have players – sometimes a couple, sometimes many players – all going for a goal. This is very different than games or sports with one player. The idea of collaboration makes everything harder. In this episode, Edward Rusu tells us all about Multiagent Reinforcement Learning (aka MARL). Edward is a researcher Read More ...

Nothing feels more like Artificial Intelligence than when a computer learns by itself through repeated simulations. Computers can now master games by simply playing the game over and over against itself. This is reinforcement learning. Today we have David Stroud on the show to explain to us a bit of reinforcement learning. He’ll give us Read More ...

Liam Porr wrote ‘Feeling Unproductive? Maybe you should stop overthinking’ The post had thousands of visitors and made it to the top of some blogging site. Liam did come up with the title and some of the text but he didn’t do it alone. Liam had help from GPT-3. GPT-3 is the latest readily available Read More ...

We asked Eric Schles to come on the show to explain A/B Testing to us. He didn’t stop there. He explained a few other things along the way and as you expect with someone with his vast experience in technology and data science, our conversation took some twists and turns. Eric is writing a Data Read More ...

We connect with Shanif Dhanani, Co-founder and CEO of Apteo, to learn how he and his team are making data analytics and presictions easier. If you’re looking to do this in your organization, like we’ve done, you will want to listen and hear about some of the hurdles and how they are being solved.

In this episode, we get to talk to an insider of the big data movement. Arun Murthy is one of the founders of Hortonworks and has spent well over a decade in the big data industry. We ask Arun to walk us through what has challenged in the industry, his journey, and what is next Read More ...

According to FatalEncounters.org, there have been 934 police-involved deaths between January 1, 2020 and June 12, 2020. How does a lifelong, award-winning journalist, the former editor/publisher of the Reno News & Review and a former journalism instructor at the University of Nevada, Reno create one of the leading data sources for US fatal encounters with Read More ...

“The future of streaming music is more than just playlists of songs with long gaps of silence,” says Co-Founder and CEO of Super Hi-Fi, Zack Zalon. We are excited to have Zack on the show to tell us a bit about his company, data, and technology he uses. Like our show? Subscribe. Write a review. Read More ...

We’re still in the midst of COVID-19. We wanted to see how someone like David Purdy would approach this problem from a data and data science perspective. He didn’t let us down by introducing high-level concepts like the OODA loop, developed by Colonel John Boyd for combat operations process, and his own Onion Diagram which Read More ...

How do you think about your customers? Not in business? How are businesses thinking about you? Customer Analytics is interesting because the techniques can be applied to a number of different disciplines. Raymond Collins is a friend of the show and has 12 years of experience leading data science, customer analytics, and data strategy initiatives. Read More ...

In this episode, we discuss supply chain and data science with Tim Gagnon. Tim is the Vice President of Analytics and Data Science at C.H. Robinson and has recently been tapped to lead the newly launched Robinson Labs. Be well,be safe, stay sane.

We are joined by four people with four different perspectives about product management. We interviewed them separately and then combined their responses to seven questions about their field. Soumeya Benghanem is the head of product management at Strategy & Action. Clement Kao is a product manager at a Financial Technology company based in San Francisco. Read More ...

Today we have a guest that will help us understand data science in politics. Dr. Andrew Therriault is a Data Science and Strategy Consultant.  He teaches a course entitled ‘Data Science for Political Campaigns’ at Harvard. Prior to this, he served as the Chief Data Officer for the City of Boston and the Director of Read More ...

On today’s show, we are joined by Hector Gutierrez and Heath Herel to discuss what it means to be a Scrum Master. Hector is an old friend of the show. Over the course of his 15+ year career, Hector has had the opportunity to work on IT integration projects spanning all aspects of his respective Read More ...

In this buffet, you get to bear us talk about data science jobs, Tesla removing features, Appl slowing down phones, the terror of interviewing for jobs, dynamic programming. We hope you are full after this meal.

Jose Quesada (@quesada) is the CEO and Founder of Data Science Retreat (@datascienceret) in Berlin, Germany. DSR is one of the top market leading, bootcamp-style schools in Europe. Jose has mentored over 200 projects and has a talent for choosing a project. He gives us his thoughts on what constitutes a successful Machine Learning or Read More ...

In this episode, we are joined by Kelsey Hightower who schools on Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the conductor to the orchestra of containers (or something like that).   Kelsey is one of the real people on Twitter answering questions and having conversations.  His handle is @kelseyhightower. That’s not his only qualification: he’s also the author of the Read More ...

On this episode, we talk with John Lee, @jclee20100, about ELROI (www.el-roi.space). Whether it classifies as fully functioning satellites or space trash, there’s a good amount of material orbiting our earth. Locating your own satellite becomes a challenge. Listen to find out how ELROI does it. By the way, these satellites are getting smaller allowing Read More ...

In 2019, our podcast hit major milestones. * 32 new episodes * 100,000 downloads * Sponsored by the University of San Francisco www.usfca.edu/dsi * Most importantly, we met and interviewed some amazing people: James Savage Haftan Eckholdt Noemi Derzsy Prem Ganeshkumar Maria Victoria Arroyo Brian de Heus Miguel Garcia Kenneth Reitz Alaa Moussawi Elissa Shevinsky Read More ...

In this episode, we have Dr. Mihai Maruseac give us a different perspective about Differential Privacy. His perspective comes from Computer Science instead of Statistics. Like all of our episodes, we jump around from privacy to other topics to Boston and back. Want to share your thoughts? Email us at antonio@datascienceimposters.com or jordy@datascienceimposters.com

Today on the show, we have Eric Wong who tells us about how you can fight some of those machine learning / artificial intelligence programs with a little of their own medicine. Eric is a PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon University and his work is focused on solving the problem of adversial examples. I’d say Read More ...

How private is that survey data? Differential Privacy allows us to quantify this and other questions about data and it’s privacy. On this episode, we are joined by Dr. Claire McKay Bowen. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Statistical Sciences Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory studying methods of data privacy, specifically Read More ...

We’ve done our best as imposters to talk about machine learning and in this episode we have an expert join us. Dr. Jon Krohn is the Chief Data Scientist at untapt and is the author of Deep Learning Illustrated. Jon provided us with a ton of insights about the space and also about what deep Read More ...

In this episode, we talk about mentoring with Reshama Shaikh. She explains some of the do’s and don’ts of mentoring. Reshama is an independent data scientist/statistician and MBA with skills in Python, R and SAS. She is an organizer of the meetup groups NYC Women in Machine Learning and Data Science and NYC PyLadies. If Read More ...

Antonio asserts that this is one of those topics that is rarely talked about and less rarely taught in colleges and universities but is a staple of any enterprise system. In this episode, Antonio tries to explain the concept to Jordy. Don’t worry, he’ll quiz him later. Our sponsor is the University of San Francisco. Read More ...

We know nothing about manufacturing. Okay, maybe Jordy knows a bit more than Antonio but we, collectively, still know nothing. In this episode, we talk with Adam Montoya and Christian Gonzalez who give us a lesson in manufacturing and also tell us about Bright Machines. Bright Machines’ tagline is Software-Defined Manufacturing and we want to Read More ...

In this episode, we talk to Stefan Woort-Menker and Kaitlyn Wojtaszek, founders of Moonllight.com, about their journey to start an online company. This is an episode about the challenges of getting your product to market, how the idea was formed, the pitfalls to avoid, and the hype versus reality. I would say more but then Read More ...

What does the manufacturer of video cards have to do with autonomous or driver-less cars? Find out from our next guest, Nico Koumchatzky. Nico, Director of AI Infrastructure, helps us navigate through our understanding of this technology. He’s even got advice for those of you starting your career in data science, artificial intelligence, or a Read More ...

The Complex Systems Society has this on their website ‘The most famous quote about Complex Systems comes from Aristotle who said that “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”‘ In this episode, we invite Dr. Bruno Gonçalves to explain it to us, the data science imposters. Bruno gives us a nice mix Read More ...

Would you give up Control for Convenience? Blockchain will protect you. Vikal Kapoor joins us on this conversation. Vikal is an experienced entrepreneur whose latest venture as CEO of Dapps is solving customer experience problems using Blockchain technology. Specifically, they are building customer relationship management (CRM) software on top of an Enterprise Blockchain computing platform. Read More ...

Your company wants to catch up with the buzz of data science, machine learning, or artificial intelligence. What do you do first? Hire a PhD in Physics to build artificial intelligence algorithms? Hire a team of consultants? Leigha Jarett join us to give us her view. As an employee of Looker, she’s had this conversation Read More ...

Elissa Shevinsky, CEO of Faster Than Light, gives us some insight about entrepreneurship in technology. As a successful entrepreneur, she’s seen a few things and has gained much knowledge on entrepreneurship which she shares on this episode. Join us as she walks us through the journey of starting multiple technology companies.

Antonio and Jordy talk about the company in California that’s so fed up with Yelp that they have requested 1 star reviews – they’ve almost made it mandatory given that they give 50% off their otherwise very expensive pizza pies. Their conversation then devolves into other tangents.

The notes below are inside look on how we structured this week’s episode … If your p-value is higher than .05, you can’t publish research. Antonio: What is a p-value?   Jordy: The P value, or calculated probability, is the probability of finding the observed, or more extreme, results when the null hypothesis (H0) of Read More ...

Two days after recording this, we saw the article ‘Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science’ – https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html Climate Change is a topic that requires arguments based on data not rhetoric. Science not politics. Facts not opinions. During our conversation, we referenced the following: https://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/01/17/using-data-mining-make-sense-climate-change https://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement

Here’s our simple, straightforward guide to starting a podcast. Yes, you can do it. For our hardcore data science listeners, we’ll be back next week.

Dr. Alaa Moussawi joins us to talk about how the NYC Council is leveraging data and how this data is helping New Yorkers along the way. NYC makes their data available so you too can explore it and answer the questions that you care about – https://opendata.cityofnewyork.us/ To learn more about Alaa’s Data Science Team, Read More ...

Predictive policing companies have received some unwanted attention. Police departments are minimizing their use, if not eliminating these programs altogether. Predictive policing aims at leveraging more data when determining crime areas, identifying perpetrators, and allocating resources. What do you think? Tell us on Twitter @dsimposters or email us at jordy@datascienceimposters.com

Our friend, Miguel Garcia, pops in on this episode. We always love having Miguel on the show. This is especially true today when we get his take on the latest news events we are covering in this episode. While we have Miguel on he talks to us about his role as a Senior Solutions Engineer Read More ...

Our agenda with Kenneth was to have an honest, unscripted conversation and we succeeded. If you’ve never heard of Kenneth, you may have heard of the several Python tools that he has helped to authored requests and pipenv. (According to https://pypi.org/project/requests/2.9.1/, Requests gets 43 million downloads per month.) Or you’ve read his book Hitch Hiker’s Read More ...