Dear Analyst

With an undergraduate degree in zoology and a master’s in public health, you wouldn’t expect Amanda Makulec to lead a successful career in data analytics and data visualization. As we’ve seen with multiple guests on the podcast, the path to a career in data analytics is windy and unexpected. It was the intersection of public […]

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Sometimes pop culture and data analysis meet and the result is something interesting, thought-provoking, and of course controversial. How can one use data to prove definitely which Taylor Swift songs are the most underrated? Isn’t this a question for your heart to answer? Andrew Firriolo sought to answer this question over the last few months […]

The post Dear Analyst #125: How to identify Taylor Swift’s most underrated songs using data with Andrew Firriolo appeared first on .

We sometimes forget that a large organization is composed of groups and divisions. Within these groups, there are teams and individuals looking to advance their careers. Sometimes at the expense of others. When your advancement depends on the success of your project, the benefits of that project to your company may be suspect and the […]

The post Dear Analyst #124: Navigating people, politics and analytics solutions at large companies with Alex Kolokolov appeared first on .

When you think of data journalism, you might think of The New York Times’ nifty data visualizations and the Times’ embrace of data literacy for all their journalists. Outside of The New York Times, I haven’t met anyone who does data journalism and data storytelling full-time until I spoke with Ben Wylie. Ben is the […]

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There are only so many ways to make Excel “fun.” If you’ve been following this blog/podcast, stories about the financial modeling competition and spreadsheet errors that lead to catastrophic financial loss are stories that make a 1980s tool somewhat interesting to read and listen to. There are numerous tutorials and TikTok influencers who teach Excel […]

The post Dear Analyst #122: Designing an online version of Excel to help Uber China compete with DiDi on driver incentives with Matt Basta appeared first on .

One of the more popular courses you could take at my college to fulfill the finance major requirements was Behavioral Finance. The main “textbook” was Inefficient Markets and we learned about how there are qualitative ways to value a security beyond what the efficient market hypothesis purports. During the financial crisis of 2008, psychology professor […]

The post Dear Analyst #121: Fabricating and skewing Excel survey data about honesty with behavioral economists Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino appeared first on .

Data analytics and business analytics are still relatively new areas of study (in terms of academics). The subject borders business and computer science. When I went to school, the only data analytics classes available were special electives offered through our school’s continuing education department. In this episode, I spoke with Zach Wilner who currently leads […]

The post Dear Analyst #120: Marketing attribution, sensitivity models, and building data infrastructure from the ground up with Zach Wilner appeared first on .

Future Dear Analyst episodes will get more sporadic since, well, life gets in the way. Unfortunately curiosity (in most cases) doesn’t pay the bills. Nevertheless, when I come across an idea or person that I think is worth sharing/learning more about, I’ll try my best to post. In this episode, I interview the Chief Scientist […]

The post Dear Analyst #119: Developing the holy “grail” model at Lyft, user journeys, and hidden analytics with Sean Taylor appeared first on .

No, this isn’t an episode about how Facebook’s algorithm and feed works. The data science function is popping up in companies small and large given the amount of data swimming around. No other company understand the power and influence that data science can have on the customer experience than Facebook (Meta, to be exact). Akos […]

The post Dear Analyst #118: Uncovering trends and insights behind Facebook News Feed, Reels, and Recommendations using data science with Akos Lada appeared first on .

The Google Workspace team announced a slew of Google Sheets functions a few months ago (February 2023). These functions look familiar and that’s because Microsoft Excel released most of them two years ago. I never had a chance to play around with the new functions in Excel since I don’t have the latest Office 365 […]

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