Valley TechCon Slides

This week, I gave a talk at Valley TechCon in Harrisonburg, VA (where I live), which is a conference that features tech businesses and practitioners from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and is in its 2nd year. There were a bunch of cool topics and speakers, and it was great to see what other great… Continue reading Valley TechCon Slides

Becoming a Data Scientist Episode 17: Andrew Therriault

In the first episode of the Becoming a Data Scientist podcast recorded in front of a live audience, Renee interviews Andrew Therriault – formerly the Director of Data Science for the Democratic National Committee & Chief Data Officer for the City of Boston, and currently Data Science Manager at Facebook – about how he learned data science, what advice he has for people who want to learn data science and apply for data science jobs, and about his career path as a Data Scientist and leader in the field.

Episode 17 Audio

RVATech Summit Slides

I promised the audience at the RVATech Summit yesterday that I’d post the updated slides for my “Can a Machine be Racist or Sexist?” talk, so here they are! Here is the link to the previous post, which has a pdf version of the slides that’s almost identical, and a video from when I gave… Continue reading RVATech Summit Slides

Tom Tom Fest Applied Machine Learning Conference 2019

The 2019 iteration of Tom Tom Fest (named after Thomas Jefferson) starts in under a month, and the Applied Machine Learning Conference (AMLC) is just over a month away, on April 11, in Charlottesville, VA! This is a conference I’ve helped plan since the beginning, and it’s grown in 3 years from a single theater… Continue reading Tom Tom Fest Applied Machine Learning Conference 2019

Summer of Data Science Goal-Setting

The purpose of the Summer of Data Science is to learn a specific topic or complete a specific project or read a book or finish a course so you can check something off of your long data science “to learn” list, and have fun achieving goals along with other data science learners during a fixed period of time. The deadline should be motivating, to get you to start and finish something before the summer is over.

Week 1 was all about brainstorming ideas and gathering resources – dreaming up what you’d love to learn, and finding content that will help you learn it.

Week 2 (which started yesterday, but don’t worry, jump in any time even if you see this a month from now) is all about goal-setting.

Can a Machine Be Racist or Sexist?

I presented a talk with this title at the Applied Machine Learning Conference at Tom Tom Fest in Charlottesville (which I also helped plan) last Thursday April 12, 2018.

My interest in this topic started long ago, and I partially based this talk off of my blog post “A Challenge to Data Scientists” from 2015. There are a ton of links throughout, and I included the slide notes so you have those along with the presentation…