Half Stack Data Science

In this episode of Half Stack Data Science we continue our season 3 all about data science education, with a conversation with Matt Harrison.

Matt stands as a prominent figure in the Python and data science community. A Stanford Computer Science alumnus, he's made significant contributions through his best-selling books, which include titles like "Effective Pandas", "Effective XGBoost", "Machine Learning Pocket Reference", and "Illustrated Guide to Learning Python 3." Beyond authorship, Matt has shared his expertise at major corporations such as Netflix and NASA, as well as academic institutions like Stanford, the University of Utah, and BYU. With a Python journey beginning in 2000, he's equipped thousands with vital skills, both online and in-person. He runs MetaSnake, a Python and Data training company.

We talked to Matt about the pushback he gets whenever he posts code online, what we all think of Excel’s newly announced Python integration, how ChatGPT has affected our work, and whether cooking is a good metaphor for programming.

In this episode of Half Stack Data Science we continue our season 3, all about data science education, with a conversation with Reuven Lerner.

Reuven is a full-time Python trainer with a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering from MIT, and a PhD in learning sciences from Northwestern University.

In 2020, Reuven published "Python Workout" a collection of Python exercises with extensive explanations, published by Manning. He's currently working on "Pandas workout" a similar collection of exercises using the "pandas" library for data analytics.

Reuven's free, weekly "Better developers" newsletter, about Python and software engineering, is read by more than 30,000 developers around the globe.

Reuven's most recent venture is Bamboo Weekly: Every Wednesday, he presents a problem based on current events, using a public data set. And every Thursday, he shared detailed solutions to those problems using Pandas.

We spoke to Reuven about his love of teaching Python to beginners, what he thinks of notebooks and ChatGPT as educational tools, and how he got banned for life from advertising on Facebook.

In this episode, David & Shaun talk to Lisa Carpenter. Lisa is the lead data science instructor at Digital Futures, with responsibility for the design and delivery of the Data Science programme. Prior to transitioning to teaching, Lisa gained over 10 years of experience in the data industry. Lisa is passionate about empowering people through digital skills and thoroughly enjoys seeing students grow their data careers.

Among many topics, we discussed how chefs are retraining to be data scientists, why Lisa doesn't like the "let me Google that for you" website, and the present and future of data education.

The Half Stack Data Science podcast is back (again)! Season 3 is coming very soon. In the meantime, listen to our teaser episode where we briefly recap our first 2 seasons and introduce the concept behind season 3; a series of interviews with educators who are bringing data science to the people!

In this episode of Half Stack Data Science we continue our series "The Orthogonals" with a conversation with Chris Moffitt.

Chris is a Senior Manager Strategic Pricing & Analytics in the medical device industry. He is an active Python user with over 15 years of experience using Python for everything from web development to system administration and most recently data science. He is the author of the popular blog Practical Business Python (pbpython.com) where he describes how to use Python to solve common business problems. 

We spoke to Chris about how he has used Python to his benefit at work, how the desire for automation is a mindset, and the future of complex machine learning models in the business world. Chris is entirely self-taught when it comes to using Python and you'll hear him reflect on this when he says "There's no way to learn programming outside of programming".

In this episode of "the orthogonals" we spoke to Joana Wang. Joana is a data aficionado with a passion for education. Her ambition is to help people demystify the world of data and make analytics second nature while having fun.

Having worked both in strategy consulting and industry, she's had projects across retail & wholesale, supply chain and financial services. In her last 8 years of experience, she's spent most of her time doing financial modelling, building bespoke data analytics products and wrangling data - a lot of it! This has required her to not only be able to technically develop solutions but also understand the wider business context and relate to people's needs, which she tries to embed in her teaching style.

We spoke with Joana about a variety of topics including how to incorporate data science into the business world, the state of data science education, what skills you need to be a data scientist and which of those skills are easier to teach or can even be taught at all. To give you a teaser, she summarised this beautifully when she said "No amount of code is going to tell you how to think".

In the first episode of season 2, "The Orthogonals", Shaun and David speak to Andrea Jones-Rooy.

Andrea is a social scientist specializing in complexity.  She has written a book and several research papers on complex systems, and regularly contributes articles to media outlets on (you guessed it!) complexity — plus data science, international relations, diversity, and uncertainty. She is also a standup comedian and circus performer. The whole thing is confusing, but basically she’ll do whatever it takes to get people to pay attention to social science & complexity. Andrea earned her Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

We discussed why you shouldn't do a political science PhD to become a data scientist, how a political science PhD will benefit you in data science if you happen to have one, finishing a PhD thesis in a Thai restaurant, and what skills are missing from most data science courses and what to do about it.

In this teaser episode of the Half Stack Data Science podcast, the hosts David Asboth and dr Shaun McGirr recap the first six episodes of the podcast and introduce the upcoming season 2: The Orthogonals