Statistically Interesting

In this episode, Jake does something a little different. Give Directly is a data driven charity that uses direct cash-transfers to make a difference in the lives of the extreme poor. This episode includes parts of the GiveDirectly semi-annual public call. Find out how you can give at www.givedirectly.org.

Jake interviews John Rauser, Data Scientist at Snapchat. Topics include how statistics would be better taught through computer science than math, how John optimized the design of AWS data centers using data analytics, and what it means to be a Fareologist.

Jake interviews Sarah Catanzaro, Head of Data at Mattermark. Topics include the career trajectory of Somali Pirates, the classification algorithm that Mattermark uses to sort companies into different industries, and how adversary simulation and the analysis of an insurgency prepared her for building a database of private companies.

Jake interviews Tim Wisniewski, Chief Data Officer for the City of Philadelphia. Tim tells us about the difference between thick and thin data, the challenges of writing ETL scripts when your source data is an LED display, and which data shouldn’t be open to the public. 

Jake chats with Jason Maynard, Director of Data and Analytics at Zendesk. Topics include how to channel the tiger, what data science looks like at Zendesk, and how Jason’s career advanced from counting things, to telling other people what to count, to figuring out what to count next.

Jake chats with Stacey Mosley, Founder and CEO of FixList and former Data Scientist for the City of Philadelphia. Topics include how crumbling buildings led Stacey to work in city government, how she analyzes public data to empower real estate developers, and what Wyatt Earp has to do with mortgage foreclosures.

Jake chats with Vijay Subramanian, Chief Analytics Officer at Rent the Runway. Topics include Data strategy at Rent The Runway, philosophies about math and getting more numerate as a species, and what being data-driven really means.

Jake chats with Yevgeniy Slutskiy Meyer, Data Scientist at RJMetrics. Topics include the fly’s sense of smell, differences between data science in academia and the real world, and some classification and attribution algorithms he’s currently working on.

Jake chats with Will Morel, Senior Director of Media Analytics at Ampush. Topics include the relative ordering of mega, giga, terra, and other multiples of bytes, how Will uses statistical techniques like conjoint analysis to understand the value of the various services Ampush offers and how Will is only a partial jerk.

Jake chats with David Wallace, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at RJMetrics. Topics include the spinal neural networks of frogs, the one tool David can’t live without, and why we’re all still stuck in spreadsheets.

RJMetrics Co-Founder and COO Jake Stein chats with Ian Murray, Lead Data Scientist at Twitch. Topics include the difference between forward osmosis and reverse osmosis, what data science looks like at Twitch, and some easy tricks for eliminating spam from one of the most popular websites in the world.

RJMetrics COO Jake Stein chats with Raaid Ahmad, Head of Analytics and Data Science at Weebly. Topics include the point of diminishing returns when playing multiple tables of online poker simultaneously, what analytics looks like at Weebly, and how to power 2% of the internet.

Jake Stein, COO and Co-Founder at RJMetrics, speaks with Cullen O’Neill, Business Intelligence Lead at Vimeo. Topics include How he automated most of his statistical analysis work, the monthly accounting reconciliation that he unfortunately has not yet been able to automate, and his favorite Star Wars themed data pipeline tool.