Building a Climate Change MEME Generator
Memes are the most efficient messenger in society today. Is there any other vehicle that can carry a powerful statement across the world as quickly and efficiently as a good meme? This thought process was the inspiration for my group’s entry into OpenAI’s recent Climate Hackathon: The Climate Change...
Software Will Replace Your Financial Advisor
As a data scientist, I find it hard to believe that anyone would trust their financial portfolio to an advisor who doesn’t understand the basics of statistics and probability. Yet, how many investors do you know who blindly trust their advisor or financial planner? How many of those advisors...
Using Machine Learning to Estimate Price Elasticity
During the final semester of my grad school analytics program, I was tasked with estimating price elasticity for wine. At first glance, this seemed like a simple objective. In economics, I was taught that price elasticity is the percent change in demand given the percent change in price (i.e....
The Most Important Programming Lesson
In the fall of 2012, I walked into my graduate advisor’s office and asked her which computer science class she recommended for me to enroll in. I explained that I was a complete novice in programming. She suggested Introduction to C Programming. After attending a few lectures, I discover...
How much will the market help you retire?
By Jeff Lundy I know a couple friends who model their retirement outcomes. Recently, I asked them what growth rate they assumed for investments. Interestingly, we all used a similar rate: 4%. That seems appropriately conservative, and by setting it low you bake in all kinds of uncertainties (taxes...