2018 Canberra Balloon Spectacular — a 5:30am start to the day but the view was worth it. I set up a small pond in the yard and it has turned into a water hole for all the thirsty bees and wasps from the area. One of the unpleasant summer chores is removing these big huntsman … More Random Summer Pics
Identify a problem that would benefit from using R Read An Introduction to R by Venables, Smith, and the R Core Team Work on solving the identified problem using R Get access to resources with lots of R code templates for solving different problems (e.g. Handbook of Statistical Analysis using R by Everitt and Hothorn and Data … More The Learn-R Algorithm
What is the optimal way to introduce and embed analytics in an organisation? This is a question I have been wrestling with for years. There are three broad options and a lot of in-between: (1) a centralised analytics team that services different business units in the organisation; (2) a distributed structure where analytics professionals are … More The Case for Centralising Analytics
I recently concluded a two-year stint managing a team of ten highly skilled analytics professionals spread across three different locations. There were of course many challenges but the team over-achieved on just about every measure of success one can imagine. The team’s wins include completing on-time and under-budget a data-matching project that delivers tens of … More Agile Data Science: A Portfolio Approach to Managing An Analytics Team
Can you see the baby fry in the photo? I set up a small backyard pond over the new-year break and put in a few white cloud minnow, a hardy fish that is known to be able to survive Canberra’s winter. Nice surprise to be greeted with baby white clouds this morning.
Dan Ariely is always worth reading and I picked up The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty over the Christmas break and it did not disappoint. The key findings of Ariely’s work in this area are summarised in the following diagram, which lists some of the factors and forces that are shown through experimental studies to shape dishonesty, both … More Ariely’s Mental Model on Dishonesty
After a long bull market, most investors are sitting on healthy gains and a fair few are probably twiddling their thumbs wondering what to do next, if anything. There is plenty of talks about an imminent crash. CAPE valuations are high, very high. VIX is low, very low. The only reasonable way to justify current … More Hanging to Your Gains in a Lofty Market
Combating terrorist financing
My Irrational Life
Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics. By Terence Tao
