On My Shelf with Tereza Iofciu — Lead Data Scientist at Freenow
About me
Tereza Iofciu is lead data scientist at Freenow in Hamburg, working on cool projects in the mobility sector. She has worked in both data engineering and data science teams at Freenow and XING SE and has a PhD in the field of Information Retrieval. She started the PyLadies Hamburg group where she is co-organising meetups with wonderful ladies. She is also the Hamburg ambassador for Women in AI. → Twitter
On my shelf
Sapiens
A Brief History of Humankind
by Yuval Noah Harari
My opinion
Because every human being (Homo sapiens) should be aware of the fact that historically speaking humans have not always been at the top of the food chain, nor have we been kind to nature and animals. The book also describes how the different relationships between humans are what make us powerful and this is something we face in teams also at work at any level.
464 pages, Harper Perennial 2018
Standard Deviations
Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
by Gary Smith
My opinion
Data has become ubiquitous in the past years, from data journalism and data products all the way to data-driven decision making. It is becoming more important for the general society to be more data literate. The book goes through a lot of historical examples of mistakes done in data analysis, from accidental ones to deliberate ones, from innocent to totally malicious; analyses them and walks us through how to see the inconsistencies.
304 pages, Abrams Press 2014
Exploratory Data Analysis
by John W. Turkey
My opinion
Any aspiring data scientist or data analyst should take a glimpse through this book, it’s written by the inventor of the box plot. Even though the book is old, the principles behind how and why we look at data have not really changed and if one wants to understand the concepts behind the current tools in data exploration this is the book to start with.
712 pages, Pearson 1977
Weapons of Math Destruction
How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
by Cathy O’Neil
My opinion
This book is a must for anybody starting to work with data, it is a compendium of cases where data-driven mathematical models have been deployed in production with rather bad consequences, sometimes creating chain reactions. It touches on bias in data leading to biased models, ethics and lack of accountability.
272 pages, Crown 2016
The Fifth Season
The Broken Earth
by N.K. Jemisin
My opinion
I really like reading fiction and science fiction books and there is a new wave of books coming out in the past years that deal a lot with the topics of diversity and racism but scoped to fictitious societies. The Fifth Season is part of a trilogy that I really enjoyed. It could be our future.
“Intricate and extraordinary.”
―The New York Times
512 pages, Orbit 2015
How to Be Successful without Hurting Men’s Feelings
Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women
by Sarah Cooper
My opinion
Most of the book is exaggerated, but some of it is true, maybe, and it does expose some stereotypes and some lessons in a humorous way. It also has some pie charts so data is involved.
216 pages, Andrews McMeel Publishing 2018
The PM Library series “On my shelf” features Product Leaders from all over the world who are passionate about reading and sharing with the community. If you want to join the movement and share your reading list with others send us a message or fill out the following form. Let’s get better together 📚.
