Getting closer to 'Her'
Today we’re bringing you a machine intelligence progress report, mesmerizing viz, insightful data science talks, and delivery analytics.
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Articles
ICYMI
[VIDEO] Wrangle Conference 2015
If you didn’t get to attend the Wrangle Conference in October, now’s a good time to catch up. Cloudera just released videos of all the presentations. Our favorites include Clare Corthell’s talk on how AI harms individuals and what we can do to mitigate that effect, and panels about data science at early stage companies and industry giants. - Cloudera
- Related: The Human Element of Data Science
SPEEDY DELIVERY
How Instacart Uses Redshift to Drive Growth
In this interview, Fareed Mosavat, growth PM at Instacart, shares how his team combines behavior, shipping, and fulfillment data to inform product decisions. Check out how his team uses SQL to define internal metrics, conduct A/B tests, and discover how many touches it takes before a user makes their first order. - Segment
CAN’T KEEP MY EYES OFF THIS CHART
A Day in the Life of Americans
There are a bunch of charts out there showing how we spend our time, but Nathan Yau goes the extra mile with this one. Using data from the 2014 American Time Use Survey, he simulated one day for 1,000 Americans down to the minute. Don’t miss this. - FlowingData
HERE COMES *HER*
The current state of machine intelligence 2.0
These days, it feels like every other article in our newsfeeds is touting the potential of machine intelligence. This article cuts through the hype and presents this year’s major accomplishments in two categories: “(1) the emergence of autonomous systems in both the physical and virtual world and (2) startups shifting away from building broad technology platforms to focusing on solving specific business problems.” - O’Reilly
NOT SO CORRELATED AFTER ALL
The Experts Were Wrong About the Best Places for Better and Cheaper Health Care
Back in 2009, during his push for the Affordable Care Act, President Obama lauded the community of Grand Junction, CO for keeping Medicare costs low without sacrificing quality health care. Experts believed that if the rest of the nation emulated places like Grand Junction, high medical costs would decrease.
Here’s the problem: those experts only looked at Medicare data. New research using both Medicare data and private insurance data shows that low Medicare costs don’t correlate to low medical costs at all. - The New York Times
People are talking about: the Fed’s interest rate hike
On Wednesday, the Fed raised short-term interest rates 0.25 percent, meaning that some people—including homebuyers, small business owners, and investors—might be in for a bit of a bad time. For those of us who weren’t paying attention until now, here’s some context:
- Every central bank that did what the Federal Reserve just did has regretted it (The Washington Post)
- These 7 Charts Can Help You See What The Fed Is Doing (NPR)
- Absolutely everything you need to understand the Fed’s interest rate hike (Quartz)
What’s goin’ on at Mode
All systems go! Last week we launched major upgrades to Mode, including support for multi-query reports, integrated charting, and super-detailed query history. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think.
This is our last issue before the holidays. See you in 2016!
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