When I was 9, I didn’t want to be a data scientist. I wanted to be a radio host. My favourite “game” involved recording episodes of my radio show using an old cassette recorder and blank audio tapes. I would bring on my family and stuffed animals for interviews, then cut to my favourite songs - sometimes sung (badly) by me. So, when I launched Value Driven Data Science three years ago, I saw it as a great way to learn from data scientists I admired, while living out my childhood dream. What I...
6 days ago • 1 min read
“So this is Christmas and what have you done?” - John Lennon It’s that time of year again. The time when work grinds to a halt and everyone tells themselves they’ll “figure it out in the new year.” Then January hits. Nothing changes. Before you know it, another year’s over and you’re scratching your head, wondering how you got so little done. It’s not that you can’t achieve big things in a year. It’s that most people never actually start. Maybe you’ve spent years building technical skills and...
8 days ago • 1 min read
If you think the best use of LLMs in data science is coding, then you’re missing some of the most powerful opportunities. Late last year, I had an important conversation coming up with a key stakeholder who I’d known for years. And when I say important, I mean the sort of conversation that could make or break a career. Let’s just say that this person had a very particular way of responding to situations, and I knew from experience that if I made one false step, the conversation could go...
13 days ago • 1 min read
Before any important meeting, I put myself in my stakeholders’ shoes and ask: What questions might they have? What data might they request? Then I have it ready when they ask. I started doing this in my graduate days, as a way to avoid staying back late for last-minute requests. But the career benefits soon became clear: anticipating what stakeholders need - before they ask - creates far greater impact than simply doing what you’re told. Which brings me to a question I was recently asked on...
16 days ago • 1 min read
Some of the best data science opportunities I’ve received never came through job boards. They came through LinkedIn conversations. Around three years ago, I set myself the goal of posting twice weekly on LinkedIn, after previously posting only “here and there”. Six months ago, I increased that to daily posting. The results have been transformative: I’ve received work opportunities I never would have known existed; Reconnected with valued colleagues from my past; and Networked with data...
20 days ago • 1 min read
I had a stakeholder who was excited about data and ready to champion initiatives. And I completely blew it. Back in the day, when “big data” was the latest buzzword (much like “AI” is today), I worked with a stakeholder who was captivated by the idea of harnessing our organisation’s big data. Every time we spoke, she would ask how we could utilize our big data, and then tell me about the value she could see our big data creating. The level of engagement was every data scientist’s dream. The...
23 days ago • 2 min read
I was out of town for the weekend when it happened. Monday morning, I walked into the office like any other day. My colleague looked at me and said, “What did you think of the news?” “What news?” I replied. “Oh, we’re all moving to Geelong.” “Excuse me, what?” Over the weekend, the Victorian Premier had announced that my entire organisation was relocating from Melbourne CBD to regional Victoria - it was part of his election campaign. My job technically still existed, but keeping it meant...
27 days ago • 1 min read
ChatGPT just got destroyed at chess by a 46-year-old Atari 2600 console. And as someone who owned that exact console as a kid, I find this absolutely hilarious. My Atari 2600 was a hand-me-down from my cousin. And even as a kid in the early 1990s, I could see it wasn’t great. By today’s standards, though, it seems far, far worse. The Atari 2600 has about 1/250,000 the processing power of an iPhone 15 Pro. By comparison, ChatGPT runs on data centres worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet,...
30 days ago • 2 min read
Growing up, my parents had arts degrees and couldn’t understand a word I said about maths or science. Every dinner conversation went something like this: My parents: “What did you learn at school today?” Me: “In maths, we learned about differential equations.” My parents: 😕 “So… is that a good thing or a bad thing?” At the time, I thought this was incredibly frustrating. However, I now realise it was the best training I could have gotten for my data science career. Because when you spend...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read