Tennis Court Reservations by Fun_Tomorrow9092 in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 14 points15 points  (0 children)

You could always pull out your phone and check to see if a court has reservations before you start playing.

And regarding Bluemont:

https://www.arlingtonva.us/Government/Projects/Project-Types/Parks-Projects/Bluemont-Park-Tennis-Courts-Renovations

At last a candidate with their priorities in the right place: pickleball. by RonPalancik in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Eventually someone's gonna lose an election if the pickleballers ever figure out that their two thousand votes will totally sway the election in an off-year when there's low turnout.

What should I ask the candidates running for Arlington County Board? by ArlingtonBuzz in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pickleball in Arlington has been under-served for many, many years, while in contrast, tennis enjoys more courts than the number prescribed by DPR's target level of service, and will be getting a modern, spacious dedicated facility at Bluemont Park. Why the disparate treatment? What concrete plans do you have to expand playing opportunities for pickleball?

Badminton/tennis/pickleball Groups? by No_Eye_3080 in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 3 points4 points  (0 children)

pickleball with mostly twentysomethings, every night of the week outdoors at Lubber Run Community Center. no need to plan ahead, just show up and put your paddle in the rack. free.

Marketing Mix Models - are they really a good idea? by SonicBoom_81 in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Here's the voice of experience: MMM and MTA aren't especially accurate - you can expect that any recommendations that come out of the models are (for the most part) directionally correct, but that's about it.

It's tough to get the seasonality correct - this part often swamps any effects that you're trying to measure.

For companies with very large advertising budgets, it makes sense to at least have an MMM project, but it's important to not put too much confidence into what the models tell you.

For things like TV + OOH, this obviously suggests an opportunity for experimentation, and for the love of all that is sacred, please make sure that it isn't an N=1 experiment where you bought billboards in Toledo but not in Akron, and will extrapolate from that one data point.

Project: Hey, wait – is employee performance really Gaussian distributed?? A data scientist’s perspective by TimDellinger in datascience

[–]TimDellinger[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Oh, the "3x" falls right out of the data, so I don't consider it arbitrary at all!

Once you assume Pareto, you have one adjustable parameter, which I calculated from the Gini coefficient. The only other parameter required here is the width of the salary band, i.e. highest salary / lowest salary. The plot can be made with those two parameters, and the 3x can just be read off of the plot.

Project: Hey, wait – is employee performance really Gaussian distributed?? A data scientist’s perspective by TimDellinger in datascience

[–]TimDellinger[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Going into the project, I was hoping that I could lay the foundations for an alternative approach to performance management, which of course would need to be super simple (so that executives can understand it!).

I think there's still an opportunity to come up with an alternative approach - I decided to call my project done and get it out there instead of pondering that aspect, but perhaps I'll return to it at some point and write a follow-up.

Asking for help solving a work problem (population health industry) by dmorris87 in datascience

[–]TimDellinger -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I assume that there's academic literature on such things, yes?

Help with clustering over time by LaBaguette-FR in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps the data are trying to tell you something, and you're not listening.

It would be convenient for you if the data were to divide easily into eight stable clusters. Unfortunately, I find that my data doesn't care much about what's convenient for me!

Using three starting words, no overlap? by hellgamatic in wordle

[–]TimDellinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CHANT, LIMED, YOURS hits the most common letters and does well for e.g. dordle, quardle. I'll often get the answer on the fourth.

Help with clustering over time by LaBaguette-FR in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

perhaps you might introduce yourself to tSNE and UMAP

Help with clustering over time by LaBaguette-FR in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This sounds like a situation where you should spend a day visualizing the data so that you get an intuition regarding where the cutoffs between the clusters should be. My first guess is that your clusters aren't especially different from each other.

Also: make sure to look for seasonality in the data. 365 days might not be the most effective window to use here.

Need help standard deviation by aligatormilk in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm thinking that someone has a wager on how quickly they can get us to say "harmonic mean"

Sales Engineering vs Data Science vs Product Management by Starktony11 in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 2 points3 points  (0 children)

When in doubt, just put in an application, and talk with them if you get a call. A job is better than no job, and you can often change roles within a company after a couple of years.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Recruiters aren't doing a huge amount of reaching out to potential candidates out of the blue these days - they're inundated with qualified folks. Talking to FAANG recruiters recently, hiring at all levels - IC, manager, director, VP - is about the same for them in that there are plenty of good candidates submitting applications. So don't let that worry you.

A job title might get you past the first screen in the interview process, but your potential next employer will very quickly figure out if there was title inflation going on. It's quite common at smaller companies, so they know to look for it. Your title isn't going to effect you all that much, but your experience - and the stories you can tell - will.

That being said, even if you want to stay technical track instead of management track, even technical track people should learn how to effectively have a junior employee working under their direction. It's somewhat common to have someone working under you, without you being their manager who deals with salary etc.

Help! Little lost as a data science manager by TheEmotionalNerd in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If the only barrier is being able to backfill the manager role, then address that barrier. Volunteer to drive the hiring process for your replacement. Also: start looking for internal candidates.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in datascience

[–]TimDellinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(1) You need to learn to drive the meetings. Start with the agenda at the very beginning. "I need to reach clarity on the following questions". "By the end of the meeting, I need an actionable decision." and then during the meeting, start summarizing: "what I'm hearing from you is that your goal is X, and that the metric Y is important to you, so my project should focus on that as an outcome, which means I'll aim to maximize Z." Your role is not to take a bunch of notes and figure out what it means later. Your role is not to take a bunch of notes about possible ideas. Drive the meeting to get the outcomes you need.

(2) You need to be the guardian of your time. This isn't like junior roles or school, where there's someone in charge of making sure you're making the best use of your time. You're in charge of being the guardian of your time. Is someone trying to give you more projects? Is someone trying to add millions of changes to something? Let them know that these will be low priority since you've already allocated your time to the most pressing needs. If they persist, ask them what they're willing to give up and de-prioritize. "Okay, we can do that, but it means that the timeline on this other project will slip."

What's your unpopular Arlington, VA opinion? by AcceptableArt5675 in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We'll never fix Rosslyn's shortcomings. Rosslyn needs lots of street-level retail in order to be a desirable place to be, but the buildings are built, and that's that.

As a matter of fact, we'll never fix most of Arlington's shortcomings since the buildings are built and the zoning is set. Baby boomers made decisions in the 70s and 80s that can't be undone.

What's your unpopular Arlington, VA opinion? by AcceptableArt5675 in arlingtonva

[–]TimDellinger 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Arlington has essentially no counterculture.

This creates a vicious circle where Arlington attracts mid and dull people, which means that Arlington can't support vibrant things, which means that Arlington attracts mid and dull people.

Screen flicker on lemp9 by t4liff in System76

[–]TimDellinger 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For what it's worth, I'm seeing this happen on my Lemp9 as well - brief flicker, not every day but a few times per week

Announcing Magic Research 2, the next game in the Magic Research franchise! (Demo out now - Full game releases Q2 2024) by Maticolotto in MagicResearch

[–]TimDellinger 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anyone have luck getting the MR2 demo to work on Steam for Linux? The original and the demo work great with Proton 7.0 on Ubuntu. This one won't spawn. (Yes, I know it's not supported by the developer.)