Data Science

Respecting privacy at Basecamp

I spend a lot of time as a data scientist thinking about how to use data responsibly, particularly when it comes to privacy. There’s tremendous value to be found by analyzing data, but the only way the data science field will continue to have data to analyze is if we are…

Let’s Chart: stop those lying line charts

I want to talk about one of the most basic tasks a data analyst will be asked to do on a regular basis: present some data over a period of time.

Let’s look at a chart of monthly sales from Noah’s Imaginary Widget Company. I see…

Twelve Weeks @ Basecamp: A Summer Tale

Or, how I went from data zero to…hero

Real-time dashboards considered harmful

Walk into any startup office and you’ll see almost the exact same thing: a bunch of big televisions showing real-time dashboards. Traffic, tweets, leads, sales, revenue, application performance, support cases, satisfaction, A/B test results, open rates; you…