Data Science Weekly - Issue 273
Issue #273 Feb 14 2019
Editor Picks
The Winners of the World Data Visualization Prize
The results are in. After combing through hundreds of impressive, insightful and creative entries, we’ve decided on the winners of the World Data Visualization Prize 2019...
Cultural over/under-fitting and transfer learning. Or why the “Netflix Culture” won’t work in your company.
So, maybe by sprinkling some of the “AI hype” onto management culture I will be able to get people’s attention on some very important issues for not only any company, but also every founder, manager, and potentially any employee...
Candy Heart messages written by a neural network
Here's what happened when a neural net tried to write candy heart messages...
A Message from this week's Sponsor:
Themes and Conferences per Pacoid, Episode 6
In Paco Nathan's latest column, he explores the role of curiosity in data science work as well as Rev 2, an upcoming summit for data science leaders. This episode unpacks curiosity as a core attribute of effective data science, looks at how that informs process for data science (in contrast to Agile, etc.), and digs into details about where science meets rhetoric in data science. Overall, these topics are among the themes you can expect at the next Rev!
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Data Science Articles & Videos
Doing Data Science Right — Your Most Common Questions Answered
This post is by Instacart VP Data Science Jeremy Stanley, and technical advisor and former LinkedIn data leader Daniel Tunkelang. Previously, Jeremy wrote the most comprehensive manual we’ve ever seen for hiring data scientists...
This is why AI has yet to reshape most businesses
For many companies, deploying AI is slower and more expensive than it might seem...
Pricing algorithms can learn to collude with each other to raise prices
Pricing algorithms have become ubiquitous in online retail as automated systems have grown increasingly affordable and easy to implement. But while companies like airlines and hotels have long used machines to set their prices, pricing systems have evolved. They have moved from rule-based programs to reinforcement-learning ones, where the logic of deciding a product’s price is no longer within a human’s control...
First Uber Science Symposium:
Discussing the Next Generation of RL, NLP, ConvAI, and DL
I co-organized the RL track of the first Uber Science Symposium with Jeff Clune. Our blog about the event is now live! Huge thanks to all of the speakers for a day of incredible talks...
AI Was Used To Guess Young Smokers' Age And The Results Were Brutal
It’s not exactly news to hear that smoking is all-around terrible for you. But if you’re still looking for more inspiration to kick the habit in the new year, just remember that artificial intelligence (AI) is judging you...
Cyclical Stochastic Gradient MCMC for Bayesian Deep Learning
The posteriors over neural network weights are high dimensional and multimodal. Each mode typically characterizes a meaningfully different representation of the data. We develop Cyclical Stochastic Gradient MCMC (SG-MCMC) to automatically explore such distributions. In particular, we propose a cyclical stepsize schedule, where larger steps discover new modes, and smaller steps characterize each mode. We prove that our proposed learning rate schedule provides faster convergence to samples from a stationary distribution than SG-MCMC with standard decaying schedules...
Evaluation and accurate diagnoses of pediatric diseases using AI
An AI system can diagnose childhood diseases better than some doctors...
What Trump's Executive Order on AI is missing
President Trump signed an executive order on February 11 meant to shore up our competitive position in the international race for AI supremacy, but it is short on concrete steps. As the CEO of an artificial intelligence research institute, I am calling on him to include a special visa program for AI students and experts to help us win this race for the sake of both economic vitality and national security...
Competition
A$1 million on a journey to discovery with data
The Explorer Challenge starts 28 February. Can you find Australia’s next big mineral deposit? Apply your data science skills to help unearth the next generation of exploration in Australia, using real industry data.
Find out more and register: https://unearthed.link/EC_DSW
Jobs
Data Scientist - TRANZACT - Fort Lee, NJ or Raleigh, NC
Tranzact is a fast paced, entrepreneurial company offering a well-rounded suite of marketing solutions to help insurance companies stay ahead of the competition. The Data Scientist will be solving the toughest problems at Tranzact by using data. More specifically, responsible for gathering data, conducting analysis, building predictive algorithms and communicating findings to drive profitable growth and performance across Tranzact. Must have a strong grasp on the data structure, business needs, and statistical and predictive modeling...
Want to post a job here? Email us for details >> team@datascienceweekly.org
Training & Resources
Calculate TensorFlow Median Value
Learn how to calculate TensorFlow Median Value using the percentile distribution and the interpolation methods, via a screencast video and full tutorial transcript...
Tensor Variable Elimination for Plated Factor Graphs
To exploit efficient tensor algebra in graphs with plates of variables, we generalize undirected factor graphs to plated factor graphs and variable elimination to a tensor variable elimination algorithm that operates directly on plated factor graphs...
JAX: Autograd and XLA
Composable transformations of Python+NumPy programs: differentiate, vectorize, JIT to GPU/TPU, and more ... basically Numpy with gradients. And it can compile to XLA, for strong GPU/TPU acceleration. It's an ideal fit for researchers who want maximum flexibility when implementing new ideas from scratch...
Books
The Book of R: A First Course in Programming and Statistics "The Book of R is a comprehensive, beginner-friendly guide to R, the world’s most popular programming language for statistical analysis. Even if you have no programming experience and little more than a grounding in the basics of mathematics, you’ll find everything you need to begin using R effectively for statistical analysis"...
For a detailed list of books covering Data Science, Machine Learning, AI and associated programming languages check out our resources page.
P.S., Want to reach our audience / fellow readers? Consider sponsoring - grab a spot now; first come first served! All the best, Hannah & Sebastian