A quick note: This was originally published on my Substack newsletter called Data in the Wild, which will explore the growing area of data strategy with a focus on fundamental questions like how individuals and organizations can and should use data. It’ll contain posts useful and accessible for technical and non-technical audiences. Click here to sign up!

Why do we care about data?

It’s a deceptively simple and equally provocative question. It’s temping to roll ones eyes and cite that data is the world’s most valuable resource/the new oil, that data scientist is the sexiest job of the 21st century…

CODEX

A quick note: I’ve started a new newsletter on Substack called Data in the Wild, which will explore the growing area of data strategy with a focus on fundamental questions like how individuals and organizations can and should use data. It’ll contain posts useful and accessible for technical and non-technical audiences. Click here to sign up!

I imagine the early days of big data were similar to the early days of the California Gold Rush. You did some relatively easy work (stick your bare hand into a river) and got something valuable (gold). The first time an individual or organization…

This is Part III in my Business Concepts for Data Scientists series, which focuses on subscriptions, more specifically, businesses that run on subscription models. Click the link below to go to my previous post on marketing, and from there you can get to the first post, which has an introduction to the series and a focus on finance and economics.

The concepts below will be useful for data scientists who plan to or are already working at organizations with subscription models. I think reviewing these before job interviews could be particularly useful. When interviewing at places that rely on subscription…

This is Part II in my Business Concepts for Data Scientists series, which focuses on Marketing. Click the link below to go to the first post to learn more about what motivated this series and to read Part I on Finance/Economics concepts.

The concepts below are most useful for data scientists who anticipate they’ll be working with or embedded within marketing teams. I also think these are useful concepts to show familiarity with during interviews with non-technical marketing folks and other marketing specialized data scientists. In this article, I define terms and give relevant examples of how data scientists supporting…

Data Science Renee did a popular Q&A on Twitter for aspiring data scientists and one tweet stood out to me in particular:

After doing a little poking around, I couldn’t find any articles that were crash courses in common business concepts for a data science audience. Instead of doing more digging, I decided to write this working draft with a list of concepts I’ve encountered during my career, definitions with sources for depth, and brief examples for why data scientists in particular should know about and care about them. …

Through my reading on the data science field, I’ve seen a chorus of voices emphasizing not only the importance of data science in decision-making, but a stronger proposition than powering decisions should be the primary goal of data scientists. Cassie Kozyrkov, Chief Decision Scientist at Google, shares this in her fantastic Introduction to Decision Intelligence, where we learn that data science is one of the multiple fields one can go to for information to inform decisions. Sequoia covers this in their article on Why Data Science Matters, in particular when making product-focused decisions. And Piyanka Jain on Building a Data-Driven…

The following are all articles I’ve written on Medium grouped by topic.

Data Strategy Newsletter

I’ve started a Substack newsletter on data strategy for folks who work in the data space and those interested in learning more — even individuals who are curious if they can better use data in their day to day lives from entry level employee up through the C-suite. I’ve imported these posts to Medium to reach folks here as well. If this sounds interesting to you, click here to subscribe.

Welcome to the (Data) Jungle (also on Medium in CodeX): Introduction post to the newsletter on how data…

With the abundance of information available these days, particularly that which is found in punchy articles, I’ve found myself frequently in a familiar situation. I’ll be reading along, convinced by the claims made by the author until I get to the end. The conclusion — which often promises health, financial independence, improved productivity, or career success— is dubious. This happens when my definitions or assumptions are different from those of the author. …