Analytics Dispatch 2/27/2016
Break out the bubbly
How do you measure the success of a feature? Plus, the evolution of the British diet, PM onboarding advice, and Python punctuation.
COMMA ON
Punctuation in Code
Remember these cool visualizations of punctuation in novels from a few weeks back? This post employs the same methods to analyze punctuation patterns in Perl, Ruby, and Python. See if you can guess which is which. - Bastian Greshake
SQL UP
Practical skills that practical data scientists need
Last week, Noah Lorang of Basecamp wrote that, most of the time, data scientists don't need AI to solve business problems. They just need simple arithmetic. In this post, he elaborates on the skills he uses and questions he asks every day. - Signal v. Noise
SPOT OF TEA
Britain's Diet in Data
These days, the Brits are drinking less tea and more champagne. What would the Dowager Countess think of that? This comprehensive viz serves up four decades of diet data (and the entire dataset is available for download). - Open Data Institute
IT'S ALIVE!
7 Steps to Measuring the Success of a Feature
You've spent months working on a feature and now it's live. How do you tell if users actually like it? Dig into your user data and start measuring with this detailed walkthrough. - Amplitude
WELCOME ABOARD
Minimum Viable Onboarding for PMs
A product manager from Doordash shares his thoughts on the most successful employee onboarding process he's experienced. Spoiler: it involves data analysis.
- Charlton Soesanto
People are talking about: Apple vs the FBI
Apple has defied a court order to unlock the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists. The company believes building a backdoor sets “a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.” Of course, that's led to a lot of discussion about data security.
- Most Americans still think Apple should comply with FBI orders, new poll shows (The Verge)
- Why even the FBI can’t hack the iPhone (Wonkblog)
- Apple-FBI Row Spurs Senate Bill on Encrypted Data Access (Bloomberg)
- While it defies U.S. government, Apple abides by China's orders — and reaps big rewards (Los Angeles Times)
What's goin' on at Mode
You might just be tickled pink by our two latest blog posts. We analyzed the colors used in thousands of photos posted to over 400 Instagram accounts and learned a lot about how brands and popular photographers are using color on the platform. For instance, McDonald's signature red and yellow? Not as prominent as you might think.
Enjoy Leap Day!