An Obligatory Introduction to Data Science

Wesley Eldridge

Rebellious Labs

Software Engineer

University of AlabamaBSBA - Applied Economics

Agenda

● The dirty history of data science● Data scientist roles● Using data in your product and business● Tools and resources to get started

Before there was data science

Big Data

Data Scientist

What is a data scientist?

“...data scientists do three fundamentally different things: math, code (and engineer systems), and communicate.”

- Hilary Mason

Math &

StatsEngineering

Communication

Data Scientist

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What do data scientists do?

How to use data in your products and organization

Collect all the data!

“Data by itself is useless. Data is only useful if you apply it.” - Todd Park

Finding or building data

“Many social/digital scientists are reluctant to invest in making data because it’s much more costly and risky than

analyzing data you already have available.” - Sean Taylor

Using data to understand the question

Metrics to define the success of the model

Presenting the data to stakeholders or users

1. Ask a question

2. Finding or building data

3. Using that data to understand the question

4. Presenting the data to stakeholders or users

Building products and processes for better data

Do do not worry about the tools. Hire smart people and they will bring the tools with them.

How do I become a data scientist?

Start smallLearn to code● Python● JavaScript

Learn to move data● SQL ● Mongo

Learn to question everything● No gut feelings● Data-based decision making

Find some data and play with it.● Government/municipality data● Social data● Open data

Online learning● Kaggle.com● Udacity.com● Lynda.com

Develop math skills● Regression● Error analysis● Data distributions● Linear Algebra

Then What?Mathematical Modeling● Logistics regression● One hot encoding● Decision trees● Correlation● Model assumptions

Data visualization● D3.js● Tell a story

Help a non-profit/municipality● Open up their data● Tell their story● Solve a problem

bit.ly/2bxnQgb

Questions?@weseldridge