Is it just us, or does it seem like we're going to need to start plotting the pace of change in the world of analytics on a logarithmic scale? The evolution of the space is exciting, but it can also be a bit dizzying. And intimidating! There's so much to learn, and there are only so many hours in a day! Why did we choose that [insert totally unrelated field of study] degree program?! These questions and more—including a quick explanation of bootstrapping for Tim's benefit, which is NOT bootstrap...
Feb 20, 2024•1 hr 3 min
The data has problems. It ALWAYS has problems. Sometimes they're longstanding and well-documented issues that the analyst deeply understands but that regularly trip up business partners. Sometimes they're unexpected interruptions in the data flowing through a complex tech stack. Sometimes they're a dashboard that needs to have its logic tweaked when the calendar rolls into a new year. The analyst often finds herself on point with any and all data problems—identifying an issue when conducting an ...
Feb 06, 2024•46 min
The backlog of data requests keeps growing. The dashboards are looking like they might collapse under their own weight as they keep getting loaded with more and more data requested by the business. You're taking in requests from the business as efficiently as you can, but it just never ends, and it doesn't feel like you're delivering meaningful business impact. And then you see a Gartner report from a few years back that declares that only 20% of analytical insights deliver business outcomes! Wh...
Jan 23, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Aptiv, Baidu, Cerebras, Dataiku… we could keep going… and going… and going. If you know what this list is composed of (nerd), then you probably have some appreciation for how complex and fast moving the AI landscape is today. It would be impossible for a mere human to stay on top of it all, right? Wrong! Our guest on this episode, Matthew Lynley , does exactly that! In his Substack newsletter, Supervised , he covers all of the breaking news in a way that's accessible even if you aren't an MLE (t...
Jan 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min
For those who celebrate or acknowledge it, Christmas is now in the rearview mirror. Father Time has a beard that reaches down to his toes, and he's ready to hand over the clock to an absolutely adorable little Baby Time when 2024 rolls in. That means it's time for our annual set of reflections on the analytics and data science industry. Somehow, the authoring of this description of the show was completely unaided by an LLM, although the show did include quite a bit of discussion around generativ...
Dec 26, 2023•1 hr 7 min
It would be a fool's errand to try to list out every expectation for an analyst's role, but where should you draw the line? How specific do you need to be? And how can you document the unspoken expectations without stepping into micromanagement? Tim, Moe, and Julie took a run at hashing these questions out in our most recent episode so you don't have to rely solely on that generic role expectations grid you got from HR. Even though this topic is about setting expectations for other analysts, the...
Dec 12, 2023•1 hr 1 min
To mentor, or not to mentor, that is the question: whether 'tis more productive to hole up in a cubicle and toil away without counsel, or to hold close one's experience to the benefit of no one else. Perchance, the author of this show summary should have checked with one of his mentors before attempting a Shakespearian angle. But, he didn't, and the show title is pretty self-explanatory, so we'll just roll with it. On this episode, Michael, Val, and Tim chatted about mentorship: its many flavors...
Nov 28, 2023•52 min
It's been said that, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes, so why is it so hard to communicate uncertainty to stakeholders when delivering an analysis? Many stakeholders think an analysis is intended to deliver an absolute truth; that if they have just enough data, a smart analyst, and some fancy techniques, that the decision they should make will emerge! In this episode, Tim, Moe, and Val sat down with Michael Kaminsky , co-founder of Recast , to discuss strategies such as s...
Nov 14, 2023•58 min
Have you ever noticed that recipes that include estimates of how long it will take to prepare the dish seem to dramatically underestimate reality? We have! And that's for something that is extremely knowable and formulaic — measure, mix, and cook a fixed set of ingredients! When it comes to analytics projects, when you don't know the state of the data, what the data will reveal, and how the scope may shift along the way, answering the question, "How long will this take?" can be downright terrify...
Oct 31, 2023•1 hr 2 min
Seemingly straightforward data sets are seldom as simple as they initially appear. And, many an analysis has been tripped up by erroneous assumptions about either the data itself or about the business context in which that data exists. On this episode, Michael, Val, and Tim sat down with Viyaleta Apgar , Senior Manager of Analytics Solutions at Indeed.com, to discuss some antidotes to this very problem! Her structured approach to data discovery asks the analyst to outline what they know and don'...
Oct 17, 2023•55 min
Most of the time, we think of analytics as taking historical data for a business, munging it in various ways, and then using the results of that munging to make decisions. But, what if the business has no (or very little) historical data… because it's a startup? That's the situation venture capitalists — especially those focused on early stage startups — face constantly. We were curious as to how and where data and analytics play a role in such a world, and Sam Wong , a partner at Blackbird Vent...
Oct 03, 2023•53 min
It's a lot of work to produce each episode of this show, so we were pretty sure that, by this time, we would have just turned the whole kit and kaboodle over to AI. Alas! It seems like the critical thinking and curiosity and mixing of different personalities in a discussion are safely human tasks… for now. Dr. Brandeis Marshall joined Michael, Julie, and Moe for a discussion about AI that, not surprisingly, got a little bleak at times, but it also had a fair amount of hope and handy perspectives...
Sep 19, 2023•52 min
One of the biggest challenges for the analyst or data scientist is figuring out just how wide and just how deep to go with stakeholders when it comes to key (but, often, complicated) concepts that underpin the work that's being delivered to them. Tell them too little, and they may overinterpret or misinterpret what's been presented. Tell them too much, and they may tune out or fall asleep… and, as a result, overinterpret or misinterpret what's been presented. On this episode, Dr. Nicholas Cifuen...
Sep 05, 2023•1 hr 1 min
We were curious about… curiosity. We know it's a critical trait for analysts, but is it an innate characteristic, a teachable skill, or some combination of both? We were curious. How can the breadth and depth of a candidate's curiosity be assessed as part of the interview process? We were curious. Who could we kick these questions (and others) around with? We were NOT curious about that! MaryBeth Maskovas , founder and Principal Consultant at Insight Lime Analytics , joined Michael, Julie, and T...
Aug 22, 2023•58 min
This topic was such a big deal that we managed to have no guests, and yet we had five people on the mic! Why? Because this episode doubles as a marker of a shift in the show itself. Beyond that, though, we had a lively discussion about how every business stakeholder professes to being committed to being data driven. That should make every stakeholder super easy to work with, right? And, yet, analysts often find themselves struggling to get on the same page with their counterparts due to the real...
Aug 08, 2023•54 min
On the one hand, analysts generally know and accept that part of their responsibility is to not only conduct analyses, but to effectively communicate the results of those analyses to their stakeholders. On the other hand, "communication" can feel like a pretty squishy and nebulous skill. On this episode, Michael, Moe, and Tim tackled that nebulosity (side note: using obscure words is generally not an effective communication tactic). For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in ...
Jul 25, 2023•58 min
To trust something, you need to understand it. And, to understand something, someone often has to explain it. When it comes to AI, explainability can be a real challenge (definitionally, a "black box" is unexplainable)! With AI getting new levels of press and prominence thanks to the explosion of generative AI platforms, the need for explainability continues to grow. But, it's just as important in more conventional situations. Dr. Janet Bastiman , the Chief Data Scientist at Napier , joined Moe ...
Jul 11, 2023•58 min
There comes a time in every analyst's career where they consider starting up their own consultancy. Or, if not that, then at least joining an agency or a consultancy. The nature of most businesses is to grow, and with growth comes the potential for an "exit." This episode dives into that world in an attempt to demystify some of the ins and outs of the acquisition of analytics consultancies, from the owners' perspectives, employees' perspectives, and acquiring companies' perspectives. Since these...
Jun 27, 2023•1 hr 9 min
What causes us to keep returning to the topic of causal inference on this show? DAG if we know! Whether or not you're familiar with directed acyclic graphs (or… DAGs) in the context of causal inference, this episode is likely for you! DJ Rich , a data scientist at Lyft, joined us to discuss causality — why it matters, why it's tricky, and what happens when you tackle causally modelling the complexity of a large-scale, two-sided market! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned ...
Jun 13, 2023•56 min
Data gets accessed and used in an organization through a variety of different tools (be they built, bought, or both). That work can be quick and smooth, or it can be tedious and time-consuming. What can make the difference, in modernspeak, is the specifics of the "data products" and "data platforms" being used for those tasks. Those specifics, in turn, often fall on the shoulders of (data) product managers! In this episode, Austin Byrne , Group Product Lead for Data at Canva, joined us for a dis...
May 30, 2023•1 hr 2 min
There are only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a year. Logically, then, the best way to grow a career as a data worker is to spend as many hours as possible doing focused data work, right? Well… probably not. In this episode, we dove into generalization versus specialization — what does that even mean, and how should we think about balancing between the two, and how can interests and activities outside of the data work itself actually make us better analysts? Bonus activity: list...
May 16, 2023•59 min
Do you ever feel like the experiments and analyses you're working on feel a little bit like a trip on a hamster wheel — properly grounded in hypotheses, perhaps, but not necessarily moving the business forward like you'd hoped? On this episode, Matty Wishnow , the author of Listening for Growth: What Startups Need the Most but Hear the Least , joined Moe, Tim, and Val for a discussion about why that may be, and how reframing the work to focus first and foremost on identifying problems (and unmet...
May 02, 2023•54 min
Are you already inwardly groaning a little bit because our latest episode is all about privacy? Yeah. We know. We've been tracking your emotions, along with your first name, your last name, your birthdate, your government ID number, and your household income for the past ten years. Actually, we just bought that last one (but good for you on the career growth front!). Okay. You know we're just joshing you (which makes sense, since producer Josh Crowhurst stepped in as a guest co-host on this epis...
Apr 18, 2023•53 min
How does one build a strong culture of experimentation at an organization (and what does that even mean)? One way is to spend a few years working at a company that already has such a culture… and then jump ship to another organization that is well on its way! That's (sort of) what our guest, Lukas Vermeer , did when he left booking.com to go to Vista. With Val Kroll guest-co-hosting, we dug into the challenges — organizational, educational, and mindset-al (?) — when it comes to having an organiz...
Apr 04, 2023•1 hr
When it comes to simulation, we're all really asking the same question: are we living in one? Alas! We did not tackle that on this episode. Instead, with Julie Hoyer as a guest co-host while Moe is on leave, we were joined by Frances Sneddon , the CTO of Simul8 , to dig into some of the nuts and bolts of simulation as a tool for improving processes. It turns out that effectively putting simulations to use means focusing on some of the same foundational aspects of effectively using analytics, dat...
Mar 21, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Do you listen to this podcast because you're pretty sure that you're a professional fraud, and you're hoping-hoping-hoping that you will absorb enough knowledge to stay ahead of being exposed as such? Well, stop that negative self-talk! Impostor syndrome is a very real thing, and we've devoted a whole show to digging into it! Julie Hoyer and Val Kroll joined Moe on this International Women's Day episode to discuss the topic. It turns out that there has been a lot of research in the area, there A...
Mar 07, 2023•52 min
When it comes to data, there are data consumers (analysts, builders and users of data products, and various other business stakeholders) and data producers (software engineers and various adjacent roles and systems). It's all too common for data producers to "break" the data as they add new features and functionality to systems as they focus on the operational processes the system supports and not the data that those processes spawn. How can this be avoided? One approach is to implement "data co...
Feb 21, 2023•53 min
What's more sexy: analytics or innovation? What about combining them! That sounds great, and Thomas Davenport would be so proud if you pulled it off, but the reality is that the idea of innovation through analytics is one thing, while the reality of making it happen is another thing entirely. Dr. Tiffany Perkins-Munn , Head of Marketing Data & Analytics at JPMorgan Chase & Co., joined us for a discussion on the subject! For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this ...
Feb 07, 2023•56 min
We've been on a bit of a streak of culture and career discussions, which means we want to assure you that Tim is not actually tied up in a basement with no access to our content calendar. Actually, in this episode, Tim plopped down on the therapy couch as a vessel for the wisdom of Moe and Michael about structured techniques for analysts to chart the best paths for their careers. For complete show notes, including links to items mentioned in this episode and a transcript of the show, visit the s...
Jan 24, 2023•55 min
Happy new year! We're not really resolution-making types, but the incrementing of the annum is a good time to take a breath and think about some ways we might want to approach our work differently. On this episode, we took a pretty big swing at "culture" — sitting down with Aaron Dignan , founder of Murmur , author of Brave New Work (and host of the eponymous podcast ) — to discuss some of the ways modern organizations are, well, broken! From there, to the analysts within those organizations, to...
Jan 10, 2023•1 hr 10 min
