Hugo speaks with JD Long, agricultural economist, quant, and stochastic modeler, about decision making under uncertainty and how we can use our knowledge of risk, uncertainty, probabilistic thinking, causal inference, and more to help us use data science and machine learning to make better decisions in an uncertain world.
This is part 1 of a two part conversation. In this, part 1, we discuss risk, uncertainty, probabilistic thinking, and simulation, all with a view towards improving decision making and we draw on examples from our personal lives, the pandemic, our jobs, the reinsurance space, and the corporate world. In part 2, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of decision making under uncertainty.
As JD says, and I paraphrase, “You may think you train your models, but your models are really training you.”
Links
Vanishing Gradients' new YouTube channel! (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_NafIo-Ku2loOLrzm45ABA)
JD on twitter (https://twitter.com/CMastication)
Executive Data Science, episode 5 of Vanishing Gradients, in which Jim Savage and Hugo talk through decision making and why you should always be integrating your loss function over your posterior (https://vanishinggradients.fireside.fm/5)
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness)
Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superforecasting:_The_Art_and_Science_of_Prediction)
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke (https://www.penguin.com.au/books/thinking-in-bets-9780735216372)
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail by Nate Silver (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Signal_and_the_Noise)
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow)

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Hugo Bowne-Anderson, host of Vanishing Gradients, reads 3 audio essays about decision science, MLOps, and what happens when machine learning models are everywhere.
Links
Our upcoming Vanishing Gradients live recording of Data Science and Decision Making Under Uncertainty with Hugo and JD Long! (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-science-and-decision-making-under-uncertainty-tickets-467379864757?aff=vg)
Decision-Making in a Time of Crisis (https://www.oreilly.com/radar/decision-making-in-a-time-of-crisis/) by Hugo Bowne-Anderson
MLOps and DevOps: Why Data Makes It Different (https://www.oreilly.com/radar/mlops-and-devops-why-data-makes-it-different/) by Ville Tuulos and Hugo Bowne-Anderson
The above essay syndicated on VentureBeat (https://venturebeat.com/business/mlops-vs-devops-why-data-makes-it-different/)
When models are everywhere (https://www.oreilly.com/radar/when-models-are-everywhere/) by Hugo Bowne-Anderson and Mike Loukides

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Hugo speak with Norma Padron about data science education and continuous learning for people working in healthcare, broadly construed, along with how we can think about the democratization of data science skills more generally.
Norma is CEO of EmpiricaLab, where her team‘s mission is to bridge work and training and empower healthcare teams to focus on what they care about the most: patient care. In a word, EmpiricaLab is a platform focused on peer learning and last-mile training for healthcare teams.
As you’ll discover, Norma’s background is fascinating: with a Ph.D. in health policy and management from Yale University, a master's degree in economics from Duke University (among other things), and then working with multiple early stage digital health companies to accelerate their growth and scale, this is a wide ranging conversation about how and where learning actually occurs, particularly with respect to data science; we talk about how the worlds of economics and econometrics, including causal inference, can be used to make data science and more robust and less fragile field, and why these disciplines are essential to both public and health policy. It was really invigorating to talk about the data skills gaps that exists in organizations and how Norma’s team at Empiricalab is thinking about solving it in the health space using a 3 tiered solution of content creation, a social layer, and an information discovery platform.
All of this in service of a key question we’re facing in this field: how do you get the right data skills, tools, and workflows, in the hands of the people who need them, when the space is evolving so quickly?
Links
Norma's website (https://www.normapadron.com/)
EmpiricaLab (https://www.empiricalab.com/)
Norma on twitter (https://twitter.com/NormaPadron__)

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Hugo speakswith Katie Bauer (https://twitter.com/imightbemary) about her time working in data science at both Twitter and Reddit. At the time of recording, Katie was a data science manager at Twitter and prior to that, a founding member of the data team at Reddit. She’s now Head of Data Science at Gloss Genius so congrats on the new job, Katie!
In this conversation, we dive into what type of challenges social media companies face that data science is equipped to solve: in doing so, we traverse
the difference and similarities in companies such as Twitter and Reddit,
the major differences in being an early member of a data team and joining an established data function at a larger organization,
the supreme importance of robust measurement and telemetry in data science, along with
the mixed incentives for career data scientists, such as building flashy new things instead of maintaining existing infrastructure.
I’ve always found conversations with Katie to be a treasure trove of insights into data science and machine learning practice, along with key learnings about data science management.
In a word, Katie helps me to understand our space better. In this conversation, she told me that one important function data science can serve in any organization is creating a shared context for lots of different people in the org. We dive deep into what this actually means, how it can play out, traversing the world of dashboards, metric stores, feature stores, machine learning products, the need for top-down support, and much, much more.

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Hugo speaks with Mark Saroufim, an Applied AI Engineer at Meta who works on PyTorch where his team’s main focus is making it as easy as possible for people to deploy PyTorch in production outside Meta.
Mark first came on our radar with an essay he wrote called Machine Learning: the Great Stagnation (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/machine-learning-the-great-stagnation), which was concerned with the stagnation in machine learning in academic research and in which he stated
Machine learning researchers can now engage in risk-free, high-income, high-prestige work. They are today’s Medieval Catholic priests.
This is just the tip of the icebergs of Mark’s critical and often sociological eye and one of the reasons I was excited to speak with him.
In this conversation, we talk about the importance of open source software in modern data science and machine learning and how Mark thinks about making it as easy to use as possible. We also talk about risk assessments in considering whether to adopt open source or not, the supreme importance of good documentation, and what we can learn from the world of video game development when thinking about open source.
We then dive into the rise of the machine learning cult leader persona, in the context of examples such as Hugging Face and the community they’ve built. We discuss the role of marketing in open source tooling, along with for profit data science and ML tooling, how it can impact you as an end user, and how much of data science can be considered differing forms of live action role playing and simulation.
We also talk about developer marketing and content for data professionals and how we see some of the largest names in ML researchers being those that have gigantic Twitter followers, such as Andrei Karpathy. This is part of a broader trend in society about the skills that are required to capture significant mind share these days.
If that’s not enough, we jump into how machine learning ideally allows businesses to build sustainable and defensible moats, by which we mean the ability to maintain competitive advantages over competitors to retain market share.
In between this interview and its release, PyTorch joined the Linux Foundation, which is something we’ll need to get Mark back to discuss sometime.
Links
The Myth of Objective Tech Screens (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-objective-tech-screens)
Machine Learning: The Great Stagnation (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/machine-learning-the-great-stagnation)
Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek - The Original Economics Rap Battle! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk)
History and the Security of Property (https://archive.ph/dRXEK#selection-21.0-21.36) by Nick Szabo
Mark on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/marksaroufim)
Mark's Substack (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/machine-learning-the-great-stagnation)
Mark's Discord (https://discord.com/invite/drmuTjWZrm)

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Hugo speaks with Sarah Catanzaro, General Partner at Amplify Partners, about investing in data science and machine learning tooling and where we see progress happening in the space.
Sarah invests in the tools that we both wish we had earlier in our careers: tools that enable data scientists and machine learners to collect, store, manage, analyze, and model data more effectively. As you’ll discover, Sarah identifies as a scientist first and an investor second and still believes that her mission is to enable companies to become data-driven and to generate ROI through machine and statistical learning. In her words, she’s still that cuckoo kid who’s ranting and raving about how data and AI will shift every tide.
In this conversation, we talk about what scientific inquiry actually is and the elements of playfulness and seriousness it necessarily involves, and how it can be used to generate business value. We talk about Sarah’s unorthodox path from a data scientist working in defense to her time at Palantir and how that led her to build out a data team and function for a venture capital firm and then to becoming a VC in the data tooling space.
We then really dive into the data science and machine learning tooling space to figure out why it’s so fragmented: we look to the data analytics stack and software engineering communities to find historical tethers that may be useful. We discuss the moving parts that led to the establishment of a standard, a system of record, and clearly defined roles in analytics and what we can learn from that for machine learning!
We also dive into the development of tools, workflows, and division of labour as partial exercises in pattern recognition and how this can be at odds with the variance we see in the machine learning landscape, more generally!
Two take-aways are that we need best practices and we need more standardization.
We also discussed that, with all our focus and conversations on tools, what conversation we’re missing and Sarah was adamant that we need to be focusing on questions, not solutions, and even questioning what ML is useful for and what it isn’t, diving into a bunch of thoughtful and nuanced examples.
I’m also grateful that Sarah let me take her down a slightly dangerous and self-critical path where we riffed on both our roles in potentially contributing to the tragedy of commons we’re all experiencing in the data tooling landscape, me working in tool building, developer relations, and in marketing, and Sarah in venture capital.

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Hugo speaks with Hamel Husain, Head of Data Science at Outerbounds, with extensive experience in data science consulting, at DataRobot, Airbnb, and Github.
In this conversation, they talk about Hamel's early days in data science, consulting for a wide array of companies, such as Crocs, restaurants, and casinos in Las Vegas, diving into what data science even looked like in 2005 and how you could think about delivering business value using data and analytics back then.
They talk about his trajectory in moving to data science and machine learning in Silicon Valley, what his expectations were, and what he actually found there.
They then take a dive into AutoML, discussing what should be automated in Machine learning and what shouldn’t. They talk about software engineering best practices and what aspects it would be useful for data scientists to know about.
They also got to talk about the importance of literate programming, notebooks, and documentation in data science and ML. All this and more!
Links
Hamel on twitter (https://twitter.com/HamelHusain)
The Outerbounds documentation project repo (https://github.com/outerbounds/docs)
Practical Advice for R in Production (https://www.rstudio.com/blog/practical-advice-for-r-in-production-answering-your-questions/)
nbdev: Create delightful python projects using Jupyter Notebooks (https://nbdev.fast.ai/)

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Hugo speaks with Peter Wang, CEO of Anaconda, about what the value proposition of data science actually is, data not as the new oil, but rather data as toxic, nuclear sludge, the fact that data isn’t real (and what we really have are frozen models), and the future promise of data science.
They also dive into an experimental conversation around open source software development as a model for the development of human civilization, in the context of developing systems that prize local generativity over global extractive principles. If that’s a mouthful, which it was, or an earful, which it may have been, all will be revealed in the conversation.
LInks
Peter on twitter (https://twitter.com/pwang)
Anaconda Nucleus (https://anaconda.cloud/)
Jordan Hall on the Jim Rutt Show (https://www.jimruttshow.com/jordan-greenhall-hall/): Game B
Meditations On Moloch (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch) -- On multipolar traps
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody_(book)) by Clay Shirky
Finite and Infinite Games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games) by James Carse
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governing-the-commons/7AB7AE11BADA84409C34815CC288CD79) by Elinor Olstrom
Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commmons (https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons)
Haunted by Data (https://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm), a beautiful and mesmerising talk by Pinboard.in founder Maciej Ceglowski

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Hugo speaks with Peter Wang, CEO of Anaconda, about how Python became so big in data science, machine learning, and AI. They jump into many of the technical and sociological beginnings of Python being used for data science, a history of PyData, the conda distribution, and NUMFOCUS.
They also talk about the emergence of online collaborative environments, particularly with respect to open source, and attempt to figure out the movings parts of PyData and why it has had the impact it has, including the fact that many core developers were not computer scientists or software engineers, but rather scientists and researchers building tools that they needed on an as-needed basis
They also discuss the challenges in getting adoption for Python and the things that the PyData stack solves, those that it doesn’t and what progress is being made there.
People who have listened to Hugo podcast for some time may have recognized that he's interested in the sociology of the data science space and he really considered speaking with Peter a fascinating opportunity to delve into how the Pythonic data science space evolved, particularly with respect to tooling, not only because Peter had a front row seat for much of it, but that he was one of several key actors at various different points. On top of this, Hugo wanted to allow Peter’s inner sociologist room to breathe and evolve in this conversation.
What happens then is slightly experimental – Peter is a deep, broad, and occasionally hallucinatory thinker and Hugo wanted to explore new spaces with him so we hope you enjoy the experiments they play as they begin to discuss open-source software in the broader context of finite and infinite games and how OSS is a paradigm of humanity’s ability to create generative, nourishing and anti-rivlarous systems where, by anti-rivalrous, we mean things that become more valuable for everyone the more people use them! But we need to be mindful of finite-game dynamics (for example, those driven by corporate incentives) co-opting and parasitizing the generative systems that we build.
These are all considerations they delve far deeper into in Part 2 of this interview, which will be the next episode of VG, where we also dive into the relationship between OSS, tools, and venture capital, amonh many others things.
LInks
Peter on twitter (https://twitter.com/pwang)
Anaconda Nucleus (https://anaconda.cloud/)
Calling out SciPy on diversity (even though it hurts) (https://ilovesymposia.com/2015/04/03/calling-out-scipy-on-diversity/) by Juan Nunez-Iglesias
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_Comes_Everybody_(book)) by Clay Shirky
Finite and Infinite Games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games) by James Carse
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/governing-the-commons/7AB7AE11BADA84409C34815CC288CD79) by Elinor Olstrom
Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commmons (https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons)

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Hugo speaks with Jacqueline Nolis, Chief Product Officer at Saturn Cloud (formerly Head of Data Science), about all types of failure modes in data science, ML, and AI, and they delve into bullshit jobs in data science (yes, that’s a technical term, as you’ll find out) –they discuss the elements that are bullshit, the elements that aren’t, and how to increase the ratio of the latter to the former.
They also talk about her journey in moving from mainly working in prescriptive analytics building reports in PDFs and power points to deploying machine learning products in production. They delve into her motion from doing data science to designing products for data scientists and how to think about choosing career paths. Jacqueline has been an individual contributor, a team lead, and a principal data scientist so has a lot of valuable experience here. They talk about her experience of transitioning gender while working in data science and they work hard to find a bright vision for the future of this industry!
Links
Jacqueline on twitter (https://twitter.com/skyetetra)
Building a Career in Data Science (https://jnolis.com/book/) by Jacqueline and Emily Robinson
Saturn Cloud (https://saturncloud.io/)
Why are we so surprised? (http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2016/11/why-are-we-so-surprised.html), a post by Allen Downey on communicating and thinking through uncertainty
Data Mishaps Night! (https://datamishapsnight.com/)
The Trump administration’s “cubic model” of coronavirus deaths, explained (https://www.vox.com/2020/5/8/21250641/kevin-hassett-cubic-model-smoothing) by Matthew Yglesias
Working Class Deep Learner (https://marksaroufim.substack.com/p/working-class-deep-learner?s=r) by Mark Saroufim

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