Category Archives: Uncategorized

I don’t know if I would characterize myself as a “data scientist.” That said, I have done a lot of analytics work in my career and have designed a few statistical algorithms which has made me, at least at times, a fellow-traveler to those who call themselves data scientists. As a result, I was quite interested in this post by Cathy O’Neil about what she does in her role as a data scientist. She lists four points. The first two … Continue reading →

To extract meaningful information from data, it is important to have a good feel for numbers. One of my favorite examples of a “feel for numbers” is “Benford’s Law.” Benford’s law says that if you have a large set of multiple digit numbers, the odds that the first digit of any particular number in that set is 1 is greater than the odds that the first digit in any particular number in that set is 2, which in turn is … Continue reading →