Data Science Weekly Newsletter

Issue

July 16, 2015

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Editor's Picks

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A Neural Network in 11 lines of Python
A bare bones neural network implementation to describe the inner workings of backpropagation...

Team Performances Over Different Spans of Time
Some cool NFL datavis shows "how good your team has been" depends heavily on the timespan...

A Series of Pizza Commercial Videos Fed Through Google’s Deep Dream Artificial Neural Network With Bizarre Results
“Deep Cheese Dreams” is a video by Neue Modern created by feeding video clips from pizza commercials through Google’s Deep Dream artificial neural network. As the computer tries to understand what it sees, it warps the images of pizza and its various accouterments into bizarre depictions of dogs and other animals...

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Want to be a Data Scientist, but don't know where to start?
Learn essential Data Science skills in SlideRule's Intro to Data Science Workshop. In this online bootcamp, you'll learn R, data wrangling, analytics and visualization by working on real projects, with 1-on-1 mentorship from expert Data Scientists from LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Trulia and Stripe.
Spots are limited; registration ends in 48 hours!

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Can deep learning help find the perfect girl?
When a Machine Learning PhD student at University of Montreal starts using Tinder, he soon realises that something is missing in the dating app - the ability to predict to which girls he is attracted. Harm de Vries applies Deep Learning to assist in the pursuit of the perfect match...

Keynote: My Data Journey with Python |SciPy 2015 | Wes McKinney
Video from my SciPy 2015 keynote. Keeping the humor dry as per usual...

Solution for the Search Results Relevance Challenge
Winning solution to the Kaggle Crowd Flower challenge ...

Searching for Approximate Nearest Neighbours
Nearest neighbour search is a common task: given a query object represented as a point in some (often high-dimensional) space, we want to find other objects in that space that lie close to it. For example, a mapping application will perform a nearest neighbours search when we ask it for restaurants close to our location. Nearest neighbour search underpins two crucial systems at Lyst...

“Don’t Invert That Matrix” – Why And How
The first time I read John Cook’s advice “Don’t invert that matrix,” I wasn’t sure how to follow it. I was familiar with manipulating matrices analytically (with pencil and paper) for statistical derivations, but not with implementation details in software...We’ll chug through a computation example below, to illustrate the difference between these two methods. But first, let’s start with some context: a common statistical situation where you may think you need matrix inversion, even though you really don’t...

Learning from the experience of others with mixed effects models
At Stitch Fix we have many problems that boil down to finding the best match between items in two sets. Our recommendation algorithms match inventory to clients with the help of the expert human judgment of our stylists. We also match these stylists to clients. This blog post is about the remarkably useful application of some classical statistical models to these and similar problems that feature repeated measurements...

Decision Making Under Uncertainty: An Introduction to Robust Optimization
Robust optimization (RO) is a tool that helps us improve our decisions in uncertain scenarios by allowing us to add uncertainty that is present in a problem directly to a model. In this series of posts, I will introduce the idea of robust optimization and its philosophy...

The Definitive Guide to Do Data Science for Good
You are a fully-equipped (or aspiring) data scientist and want to use your precious skills for solving problems that really itch the world? Welcome to the club. The good news is that there are many ways for data scientists to do good. However, the path is not always beaten and you might need to show some initiative. This article will give you some insight on how you can get involved, either through group meetings and events, as a volunteer or in paid positions...

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Project Development Lead - Bayes Impact - San Francisco, CA Bayes Impact is a YC-backed technology nonprofit that uses data science to solve pressing social challenges across the globe. We build intuitive and powerful software applications that empower governments, nonprofits, and individuals to make critical, data-driven decisions. We turn data into actions that impact the lives of billions of people. We are a small team of open-minded, driven, egalitarian, usually sarcastic people who think there’s more to life than ad targeting algorithms and whatever messaging app kids will use next week. We are looking for talented, big-hearted individuals who are hungry for hard problems that uplift people in need...

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Learn Data Science the Hard Way
So you want to be a Data Scientist? The good news is that there are tons of great resources out there to learn from. The bad? None is comprehensive, and choosing the best can be completely overwhelming. I created this list to help you stay focused on learning what’s important, the easiest way possible. But it won’t be easy...

mpl colormaps
Viridis, the new, perceptually-accurate color map for matplotlib...

Continually updated Data Science Python Notebooks
Spark, Hadoop MapReduce, HDFS, AWS, Kaggle, scikit-learn, matplotlib, pandas, NumPy, SciPy, and various command lines...

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Automate the Boring Stuff with Python:
Practical Programming for Total Beginners Recent release recommended by a couple of our readers...
"Introductions to python are easy to find -- but at the end of the day most python tutorials for beginners end up being the same lessons repackaged, often leaving the new programmer with gaping holes in how their newly acquire skills can be applied practically. This is not one of those books..."... For a detailed list of books covering Data Science, Machine Learning, AI and associated programming languages check out our resources page...

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