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
My colleagues and I have just published on arXiv a simple but highly effective Entity Resolution algorithm that can scale to billions of records and handle significant data quality issues. The paper is titled Scalable Entity Resolution Using Probabilistic Signatures on Parallel Databases and it is an extension of our previous paper on linking millions of addresses … More Scalable Entity Resolution Using Probabilistic Signatures on Parallel Databases
There are many gems in the book Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement For a Complex World, written by General Stanley McChrystal and co-authors based on McChrystal’s experience leading the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan and Iraq fighting Al-Qaeda. One that stuck with me is a small section called The Need-To-Know Fallacy. … More The Need-To-Know Fallacy
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
