Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. Early last Spring, I was texted by a neighbor friend who asked if I’d be willing to chat with her regarding the pending college choice of her daughter. A top student at our suburban Chicago high school, the young woman had plans to become a physician, and […]
Credulous Data Science: Part Two – Surveys
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. This is the Second Part of a two-part series. Read Part One here. About ten years ago, a software vendor with whom my intelligence consulting company partnered conducted a survey on the usage of various analytics platforms that were then prominent in the space. As a proselyte […]
Simplistic and Credulous Data Science: Part One
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. A few months ago, I was solicited by one of my many LinkedIn Data Science groups to participate in a survey. I’m generally a bit suspicious of surveys, reviewing the questions carefully before making the decision to respond. This initiative, though, posed a question that quite intrigued […]
R Should Be Your Second Language – or Maybe 1.5
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. A few weeks ago, I came across a LinkedIn blog entitled “R Should Be Your Second Language (If It’s Not Your First)” by Paul Allison. Paul’s an old grad school friend/colleague from many years ago who went on to a distinguished academic career as professor at the […]
Nowcasting Chicago Crime with R
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. In my many years as a data scientist, I’ve spent more time doing forecast work than any other type of predictive modeling. Often as not, the work’s involved forecasting demand for an organization’s many products/lines of business a year or more out based on five or more […]
An Alternative View of Stock Market Returns
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. Last week wasn’t a good one economically for the POTUS. February jobs numbers were much lower than anticipated; the balance of trade deficit ballooned to its highest level in a generation even as the president doubled down on purported deficit-busting tariffs; the budget deficit skied to record […]
Evidence, the POTUS, Pandas, and Seaborn
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. In these highly-polarized political times, there seems no shortage of untruthful claims/boasts by the nation’s leaders. Alas, many citizens are highly credulous, blithely accepting the veracity of any statements from their tribes. At the same time, there are plenty of evidence-based skeptics who demand data before accepting […]
Homicide and Violent Crime in Chicago, 2018 – Barely
This is my 4th article on crime in Chicago for DATAVERSITY. A combination of several factors piqued my interest in Chicago crime two years ago. First was the availability of detailed crime data from the city. Until two weeks ago, the data were posted daily a week in arrears. Now it appears that updates will […]
Revisiting the Data Science Suitcase
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. Two years ago, I wrote a blog entitled “What Size is Your Suitcase?” in which I recounted a holiday shopping “dilemma” my wife and I experienced as we purchased mutual gift suitcases. The muddle revolved on which size bags to buy – large ones that could handle […]
M.S. in Data Science Curriculum
Click to learn more about author Steve Miller. I’ve been blogging on Business Intelligence/Analytics/Data Science for 12 years. And I’ve been recruiting analytics candidates from top colleges for my consulting firms for even longer. Those who read my blogs know I’m pretty opinionated about what I look for in new grads, preferring students committed to […]