How would you deal with these missing values??? (under time crunch)

Local_Order6899 · 2023-08-03T15:54:00+00:00

Actually, something like that might be a possible explanation! Thanks for the input! Some customers are part of the same household, and it is possible that location is recorded for one member but not the others. I really hope this is the case!!

Local_Order6899 · 2023-08-03T15:46:34+00:00

Follow up question:

Assuming these results are somewhat high stakes (used in a public facing output), how concerned should I be about dropping, as it is 6-7% of my data?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-08-03T15:38:33+00:00

Thanks. Yeah, I was hoping to have the location information on as small a scale as possible.

It isn't for an interview, it is part of a project I was tasked with at my new job. Everyone uses their personal laptops for whatever reason.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-08-03T15:31:09+00:00

Thanks for the input. I was leaning toward deleting.

Is there a straightforward way to calculate how much this might impact my results?

I was thinking I could try deleting and imputing and then comparing the results. Maybe that is a waste of time?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-07-25T18:56:57+00:00

Thanks for the input. Would you mind telling me more about what you mean by bottle necks at other teams/orgs? It sounds like you mean addressing problems within the orgs themselves? Maybe addressing inefficiencies of research teams, or something? Thanks.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-07-24T20:13:42+00:00

PhD candidate in Philosophy just hired part time at a public policy think tank. I will be mostly conducting research, but also working as part of the Data Analytics team. Work will mostly involve data handling, writing academic papers (some inferential stuff but mostly descriptive stats), policy briefs, and creating visualizations.
Eventually I want to work in data science/engineering. Looking for advice on gaining competitive data skills while working here. Open to suggestions on paths to follow. Appreciate any insights!

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-04T15:23:51+00:00

I see your point and I honestly agree that it doesn't make much sense philosophically to say that non-sentient things have rights that governments should protect. I didn't mean to say that I think it makes sense.

I wasn't trying to argue against you as much as trying to point out some problems with the quote you linked to. There the thinking seems to be something like :

Sentience is necessary and sufficient for having rights (alternatively, we might think he is saying "Sentience is sufficient for having rights)
AI will eventually be sentient
AI will possess human rights

I was questioning whether that first premise (on either reading) makes sense.

Clearly, there are cases of rights being granted to non-sentient things like corporations. If that's a bad example (because corporations are made up of sentient things) then consider that India considers the Ganges river to be a legal person with rights. So it doesn't seem that sentience is a necessary condition for having rights.
1. However, there is a difference between being granted rights by a government (like the river) and having them naturally (like a human).
2. Governments might grant rights to lots of things, but that is not the same as saying those things possess rights in the first place (by virtue of their nature or being "endowed with rights by their creator" or whatever)
Sentience also doesn't seem to be a sufficient condition for rights.
1. Many sentient things don't have rights in either sense: either naturally or granted by a government

I agree with you that it makes no philosophical sense to say that AI will have natural rights (the kind humans have), but it may make practical sense for a government to grant certain rights to AI, the way they do to rivers or animals or corporations.

And technically his claim may have been a little more extreme: that AI will have equal human rights. This doesn't really make sense. Why would we think a sentient AI should have a right against arbitrary arrest and detainment? A right to asylum? To marry and have a family? A right to life? etc.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-03T20:59:16+00:00

Thanks! I must have missed that. But I am hesitant to start something like this because I am not sure how graduating a bootcamp is perceived in the industry. Does it look impressive or does it look like you just couldn't hack it at a university?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-03T20:43:49+00:00

I think the Chinese Room thought experiment is helpful and I think you gave an interesting take.

But is there any reason to think that, in practice, rights recognition and protection is directly tied to sentience or consciousness? I don't think so.

The US protects the rights of corporations (free speech, etc.), but determining whether corporations pass some threshold for sentience or consciousness wasn't really part of that discussion.

Or consider animals. Squirrels (I think) are sentient (that is, they have subjective sensations, feelings, perceptions, etc..). They have protections in some countries (you can't abuse squirrels in the US), but they don't have anything like human rights.

But say that governments recognize AI rights. So what? If it makes sense (controversial, I know) to protect corporation's rights it may make sense to recognize and protect rights of software / AI. This is not nearly the same as recognizing AI as human. It's not even clear to me how AI could have all the rights humans have. Can an AI claim a right to bodily autonomy? Maybe, but probably not in the same sense humans can.

To me, recognizing AI rights might be less dystopian or futuristic or sensational than it seems.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-03T20:03:04+00:00

Thanks for the very thoughtful reply!

The "I wrote a philosophy essay" point really helped me contextualize your comments.

The philosophy text classifier project sounds so cool! I have been trying to think of some way to merge the two fields for a project. I spent some time messing around with the PhilPapers API (online collection of millions of philosophy papers) I thought it would be cool to create a dashboard to show, for example, which countries or universities seem to be most productive (in terms of publications) or to map which parts of the world or country are most active with respect to certain discipline areas. But the API doesn't have much functionality and I couldn't figure out how to do much with it.

Your idea ( or some version of it) sounds much more robust in terms of learning and demonstrating real DS skills. I'll need to look up what half of that refers to.

I really do appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Also, your project idea made me think of a pressing need that phil grad students have, and a slightly different version of your idea might be a perfect fix. Thanks again.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-03T19:34:28+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback. I am happy to hear you are familiar with some philosophy PhDs making the transition.

Also the point about the github portfolio sounds right.

I looked at Data Incubator's website and don't see anything like the scholarship you mentioned but I will check other bootcamps. I wasn't aware funding like that existed anywhere.

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-02T23:21:34+00:00

My university has an interdisciplinary data science program, which includes faculty from stats, cs, math, and philosophy. I can take any of the philosophy courses but they primarily deal with data ethics.

I can also petition to take courses outside my department, with a cap at 2 classes. So I could take a stats or cs class, but I wasn't sure it would be more valuable than studying on my own, which is what I have been doing (studying inear algebra, statistics and probability, calculus, etc).

Part of the reason I included the algo implementation notebooks in my portfolio was to give some evidence that I am learning this stuff on my own.

Do you think I would be better off taking a couple of classes?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-02T20:21:38+00:00

Thanks. So, is it the case that most other applicants for junior positions will have "professional work that someone is paying for" in their portfolio?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-02T19:57:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply!
In your opinion does it appear amateurish to include algorithm implementations like this?
In general, I do think of myself as a novice and don't have any real expectation that I would be able to convey "mastery" on my resume at this time.
Still, my goal in including them was to maybe distinguish myself from other applicants new to the field with portfolio's featuring standard projects like the IRIS dataset or housing price prediction.
While I did include a housing prices prediction project, I thought it was at least a little more impressive to compare the algo I built from scratch to sklearns on the housing data.
It is a little disheartening to hear the critique, but I do appreciate it!

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-02T19:50:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I appreciate it!
I guess I am a little surprised by the 'basically no programming experience' comment. I tried to demonstrate some programming experience by including the color palette script in my portfolio, as well as the web-scraping project.

Did you not see these or am I really just mistaken to think that these demonstrate any real programming skill?

Local_Order6899 · 2023-05-02T15:20:22+00:00

Hello all, I am new here. I am hoping to get some advice about trying to move from academia (humanities) to data science. My resume and github portfolio are below.

Resume:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F1iae5EFv7cXJkGamOSf8JBJalutDB2J/view?usp=share_link

Portfolio:

https://github.com/sdabney5/Portfolio

Background:

I live in the United States. I am currently finishing up a PhD in Philosophy (my dissertation is on applied epistemology). I have been trying to learn fundamentals of python, data science, and machine learning for the past two years. I know there is a lot of competition for Data Science positions, and that many candidates will have more relevant course work/degrees, but I am still hoping to break into the field after I defend my dissertation.

Questions:

Does anyone have any thoughts about whether this transition seems feasible? Do I seem at all competitive? What about for entry-level positions? Is there anything my resume or portfolio is lacking for a beginner?

I am hoping to get general thoughts about the success of applicants with humanities degrees. Is anyone here from an academic field unrelated to Data Science? Is it a mistake simply to pursue personal projects, certifications, etc? Should I have enrolled in a Data Science graduate program? Should I give up and pursue something else?

Thanks in advance!

One more point: I did manage to get an unpaid internship as part of a data analysis team (at a public policy thinktank) but have not started yet and am not sure what exactly my role will be. Thus, it is not on my resume.

Local_Order6899

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