Blog
Writing DAG
Sometimes writing is hard and other times it's downright impossible. Stack the odds in your favor with a writing system. Writing is not one skill. It's more than stringing words together. You need to research, outline, draft, edit, edit, edit, and share. A common failure mode is attempting to cram

One-Way or Two-Way Doors
Benn Stancil wrote about measuring analytics success [https://benn.substack.com/p/method-for-measuring-analytical-work] by speed of decisions made - not the outcome of the decision. Tristan Handy followed up in the Analytics Engineering Roundup [https://roundup.getdbt.com/p/decision-speed-and-one-way-doors] like a true analyst. He added a caveat. Tristan cited

DPIM Framework: Bundling Better Infra, People, Models, and Data
I cannot stop thinking about this tweet.
It has been tumbling aroundWhen will we finally realize that there are no silver bullets in data science? You need better infra, people, models, and data.
— Sarah Catanzaro (@sarahcat21) May 12, 2021

Data’s Secret Sauce
There’s a barrier to sharing your analysis beyond the four firewalls of your company’s network. It’s private. It’s sensitive. Some even say looking at an internal analysis is to peer into a company’s soul [https://benn.substack.com/p/chasing-ghosts]. Finding a way to be

Open Book Analytics
The data field is changing. People in the industry feel it. It’s an exciting time, but difficult to explain exactly why. Several people have shared their takes, but no one seems to fully capture what our profession is experiencing today. Is this momentum coming from another rebranding of data

Analytics Crafting a Way Forward
There is a developing train of thought in the analytics hive mind. It has been rolling us towards approaching our work as a craft - not a sterile set of empirical technical tools. At first glance, this idea doesn’t fit the narrative. Analysts are hard on the numbers and

Git Environmentalism - Protect our branches
Our analytics team is maturing. We have our code under version control. We check out branches when developing new features. The team even has code reviews to approve pull requests. But then the fire drill comes in from the CFO. A couple of people drop everything to put out the

Analytics: The Mixed Bag
Analytics has a branding problem. The industry is stretched thin. The careers blur org lines. The craft has a cluttered workbench. The results are muddled. Yet, there is no place I would rather be. Analytics: the industry You will not find “Analytics” in a SIC code search. It does not

Peter Diamonds: Inspiring Abundance
I was trying to recall the first time I heard of Peter Diamandis. I remember seeing him award the Ansari X Prize to the SpaceShipOne team on the news as I chewed on some Popeyes chicken. Five years later, my dad told me about a new school, Singularity University, Co-founded

Mysterious to Miraculous: Introducing the 3Ms of Comprehension
> The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility… The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. - Albert Einstein The world is full of mysteries and miracles! Mysteries come in all sizes. They can stand for centuries, like finding the proof for the Riemann Hypothesis. Most are innocent,