Playing With Google Cloud Datalab
This weekend, I played around with the newly-released Google Cloud Datalab. I learned how to use BigQuery and also played around with Google Charts vs Pandas+Matplotlib plots, since you can do both in Datalab. I had a few frustrations with it because the documentation isn’t great, and also sometimes it would silently timeout and it wasn’t clear why nothing was running, but if I stopped all of the services, closed, restarted DataLab, and reopened, everything would work fine again. It’s clearly in Beta, but I had fun learning how to get it up and running, and it was cool to be able to write SQL in a Jupyter notebook. I tried to connect to my Google Analytics account, but apparently you need a paid Pro account to do that, so I just connected to one of the built-in public datasets. If you view the notebooks, you will see I clearly wasn’t trying to do any in-depth analysis. I was just playing around and getting the queries, dataframes, and charts to work. I hadn’t planned to get into too many details here, but wanted to share the results. I did jot down notes for myself as I set it up, which I’ll link to below, and you can see the two notebooks I made as I explored DataLab. Exploring BigQuery and Google Charts Version Using Pandas and Matplotlib (These aren’t tidied up to look professional – please forgive any typos or messy approaches!) Google Cloud Datalab Setup Notes (These are notes I jotted down for myself as I went through the setup steps. Sorry if they’re not...
Becoming A Data Scientist Flipboard Magazine
I love finding and sharing good articles about data science related topics on twitter, but I know not everyone is on twitter, and also sometimes tweets get quickly lost in the timeline and they’re easy to miss. So, I’ve started sharing the best articles via a Flipboard magazine as well! Check it out! https://flipboard.com/@becomingdatasci/becoming-a-data-scientist-5ktft1lky
How To Use Twitter to Learn Data Science (or anything)
When I decided that I wanted to become a data scientist, I started following some data scientists on twitter to see what they talk about and what was going on in the “industry”. Then I saw them pointing one another at resources, and answering each other’s questions, and I realized I had only seen the tip of the iceberg of “Data Science Twitter”. That’s when I created a new twitter account.
DataSciGuide Contest
Want a way to help people that are learning data science, and also get a chance to win a $40 Amazon Gift Card? Review a data science blog, podcast, course, or other content at DataSciGuide! Here’s more info: http://www.datasciguide.com/review-stuff-and-win-a-40-amazon-gift-card/
Human Name Variations in Databases
I normally write about my adventures learning data science here, but my expertise for years has been database design and reporting, and I have some knowledge to contribute to a discussion that I thought I’d document here. A conversation on Twitter today about how people’s names are stored in databases, with stories of frustration from people that have had terrible customer/patient experience because of “unusual” names, made me want to write about this topic.