Data Think

Introduction I have purposely titled my ‘Teaching Philosophy’ as a ‘Learning Manifesto’ changing each word with purpose. I provide my learning manifesto after a description of the words. Learning vs. Teaching Teaching has many positive connotations and has an impactful connotation in our society1. However, I have often observed teachers believe the myth that they have to be THE experts and that no other person in the room can be an expert. ...

ZDNET just posted an article on the Tiobe rankings that shows R fell out of the top 20. It is a great read. Looking at the rankings, it seems like there is a clear top 10 and then the second tier is harder to distinguish. From 11-22 looks like a tie so I wouldn’t read too much into a shift anywhere from 15-25 as dire. The article even mentions this point. ...

Vicki has written a thought provoking post. I think she suffers a bit from generalization as she herself complains about generalization. I am not sure her argument is very balanced as her definition of a junior data scientist goes to low, and her picture of the expectations is too broad. Junior Data Scientists She seems to include almost every person that has completed a few Coursera courses or a couple of certificates. ...

Causeweb.org has a great collection of statistical statements, funny songs, and jokes. My favorite was from Paul Rudnick in a play on Hal Varian’s quote …statisticians are the new sexy vampires, only even more pasty. I spent part of today going through them to see what I could use for classes in the future. I wish there was a way to sort them by most downloaded or votes as there are quite a few items in the collection. ...

Data science can be a very vague title and can cover a variety of applications (although I saw it claimed by quite a few people that don’t have the background). I remember as a kid hearing the word engineer being tacked on the end of every job. I remember a few kids joking about the garbageman being called a sanitation engineer. Coming from a National Lab I felt the pressure to call myself a scientist and sometimes wondered why I didn’t get to wear cool glasses. ...