I chat with Dr. Ira Cohen, Founder and chief data scientist at Anodot, about how his company uses a machine learning technique called anomaly detection to help businesses avoid being impacted by surprises

We discuss what anomaly detection actually is (spoiler: you learn what’s normal and then detect abnormalities), why it’s challenging to define quote/unquote “normal” behavior and how black swan events such as I dunno a global pandemic that suddenly shuts down the whole world affect these techniques. We also discuss what Ira looks for in potential data scientists (hint: it’s not necessarily anomaly detection skills) and what he’s excited for in 2021.