Join a community of 1000+ data professionals by subscribing to this weekly newsletter and get weekly insights from Adam Sroka — First of all, thank you for taking the time to read my material on Medium. I love this platform and have learned a lot from my time reading and writing here. I’ll continue to write blog posts here but the majority of my work going forwards will be at my…

I recently finished Alex J. Gutman and Jordan Goldmeier’s guide to data and data science. Here are my thoughts. Introduction Welcome to my first book review. I’m aiming to do this more regularly so, hopefully, I’ll get through some of the best books I’ve picked up over the years. Today we’re…

Following these rules has drastically improved my effectiveness as a data scientist to deliver more value from my work — Being An Effective Data Scientist is Hard It’s 08:55, Monday morning, late 2016. I’ve just walked into the office of my first ‘official’ data science job. I’ve done the doctorate, I’ve learnt the maths and stats, I’ve taught myself Python and SQL, been through Andrew Ng’s machine learning course, and practised my random forests and clustering. I…

You can easily find yourself set up for failure. Verifying and checking metrics before you start was one of the most valuable lessons I learned (the hard way). — Destined for failure This is an issue that I’ve seen a few times over the years and have run afoul of early in my career. It’s also one of the most important lessons I ever learned. It’s common knowledge that a large proportion of data science projects fail. This is often attributed to…

Save money and frustration by considering the roles of analysts, data engineers, and software engineers in your data teams. — The Wrong People for the Job I’ve seen this across many companies I’ve both worked in and consulted for throughout my career — we’re not hiring the right people for the job! I still hear a lot of horror stories of data science teams underperforming, management losing confidence in data science in general, or data scientists…

Taking the leap from learning to application can be tough. Here are some things to look out for to smooth the transition. — Beware the Bookworm It shouldn’t surprise you to know that I — like many data scientists — am a bit of a bookworm. I love to read and try to pick up new skills. …

The most common reasons strong candidates get stuck in an interview are often easy to fix with the right focus — Introduction The tech world seems to have gone mad for data scientists in the last few years: many people want to get into the role and plenty of organisations are looking to hire them. As someone that’s interviewed and hired scores of talented, capable individuals for the ‘Sexiest Job of the…

The soft skills that most developers struggle with and some guidance on how to improve them — It’s Not All About the Tech As techies, we can get really excited about learning the newest tools and approaches. There’s always some big discussion in the community, like R vs. Python, Power BI vs. Tableau, TensorFlow vs. PyTorch, etc. It’s easy to get drawn in. You’re passionate about tech. Good. One thing that can really…

A lack of available data is stifling the adoption of machine learning solutions. Federated Data Sharing might be the answer. — From the earliest themes of artificial intelligence in Greek mythology, people have long thought about AI and the possibilities it may hold. With the advances in computation and mathematics, Alan Turing’s 1950 paper on thinking machines sparked the first real developments of this in practice. …