ISSUE 306 ·   October 6, 2020        

Insight

The 2020 Data & AI Landscape

I always look forward to Matt Turck's annual look at the Data and AI ecosystem and this year's post is awesome as always. If you don't have time for a deep dive, start with the "Key Trends in Data Infrastructure" section where he covers things like modern data stacks, shifting job roles, and key opportunities. 
Matt Turck, VC at FirstMark 

State of AI Report 2020

This slide deck is one of the most comprehensive resources you'll find about the current state of AI. Explores a variety of topics including AI research, talent supply, commercial applications, and predictions for the coming year. It's dense but it's a very visual deck that's easy to follow.
Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth

Sponsored Link

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Tutorials, Projects & Opinions

Why most analytics efforts fail

When Crystal Widjaja started at Gojek, their analytics systems were barely off the ground. At the time, the "IT Guy" was running SQL queries and key info was shared via Post-It notes. This is a great step-by-step guide that starts from scratch and shows how Gojek developed a data system that enabled its growth to over 5 million orders per day.
Reforge Blog | Crystal Widjaja

Four Cardinal Rules Of Statistics 📈📊📉

Statistical significance versus practical significance - which do you care about? This is a great thread!
Daniela Witten

Keeping your data pipelines healthy with the Great Expectations GitHub Action

This post is the second in a series on using GitHub for MLOps and data science. In this post, Hamel Husain shows how to use GitHub Actions with the open source project Great Expectations to automatically test, document, and profile your data pipelines as part of your CI workflows.
GitHub Blog 

Coiled: Dask for Everyone, Everywhere

Dask is great for enabling data science and ML at scale but it doesn't work for everyone. Deployment, in particular, can be tricky for users in large enterprise environments. This post introduces a new product called "Coiled Cloud" that makes Dask easy to use from anywhere.
Matthew Rocklin

The C3.ai COVID-19 Grand Challenge

Generate data-driven insights to tackle COVID-19. Compete for $200,000 in prize money and change the world. 
C3.ai

Future-Proof Your Career, While You Work

The Global Master of Management Analytics from Smith School of Business at Queen’s University is a 12-month program that can be taken from anywhere in the world. Master the essential strategies for applying analytics to business needs in this ground-breaking program.
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Code & Tools

• sqlite-utils - Python CLI utility and library for manipulating SQLite databases

• igel - A machine learning tool that allows you to train/fit, test and use models without writing code

• ggfittext - provides ggplot2 geoms for fitting text into boxes

Career

How to waste a career, one comfortable year at a time

The stakes change as your career evolves but in general, complacency is career cancer.  Here's how to know when it's time for a change.
 Apoorva Govind

And Finally...

Presidential Plinko

Who will win the U.S. Presidential Election? This online Plinko Board lets you drop one ball at a time and compare the uncertainty between The Economist and FiveThirtyEight models. Experience just how uncertain the forecasts really are. Then if you're in the U.S., vote!
Matthew Kay

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